


Like We're Made Of Starlight

by LeighKelly



Category: Glee
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, Fire Island, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeighKelly/pseuds/LeighKelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the oldest in a large family, and her father serving overseas, Santana Lopez leaves the city to tend bar in a tiny Fire Island town. Almost immediately, the female captain of a fishing boat catches her eye and calls into question everything she knows about right and wrong, and everything she knows about herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

From across the room, you catch her eye. You’re working the late shift again, at the bar, and your feet, they’re tired from your heels. At first glance, you don’t realize she’s a woman, shirtsleeves and knickers rolled up, cap haphazardly positioned on her head. But then she laughs, a woman’s laugh, and you realize, those eyes were always too pretty to ever belong to anyone but. But you chase those thoughts away, because-

You’re closing up, all alone. Mr. Edja, he trusts you. He’s an old friend of your Papi’s, and with him overseas, he’d offered you a job, a paycheck to send back to your Mama and the little ones this summer, and a place to stay, because it’s too far to home on the ferry every day. You’re homesick something fierce, but you promised you’d help. When you see something in the shadows, you jump. But then you realize, it’s her, the girl from earlier. She’s watching you.

“Go on home.” You call out. This late at night thing, you hate it, and, what if there are others? She was getting awful rowdy with those boys in there.

“Ain’t safe out here for a lady all by her lonesome.”

“You’re a lady too.” You smooth your dress, and, she steps closer to you. You shiver, but, it’s certainly not cold.

“Boys won’t touch me, Pop’s the ferry cap'n. Lemme walk ya home.”

“Home’s right up there.” You point to your little apartment.

“Walk to the beach with me then. Then I’ll walk ya home after.”

Everything in you screams to say no. Everything in you screams that she’s dangerous. And not because of the boys. Not because she walks around dressing like one of them either. But, because you look at those eyes of hers and you know, you feel things you aren’t supposed to feel. Things your Mama’s priest wouldn’t like very much. She extends her hand though, and it’s soft and warm, and you think you’d follow her anywhere she wants to go.

“Brittany.” She grins, all teeth.

“Santana.” And you go, you walk away from your little upstairs bedroom. With her. Without fear.

You kick off your shoes and you step into the soft sand. She holds your hand like it’s nothing. She holds your hand and makes you feel like there’s nothing else at all. Like the whole world’s not at war, like your Papi’s not over there, like you and your Mama don’t have three little mouths to feed.

You walk, and you tell her things. You walk, and she tells you how she’s fishin’ her brother’s boat, because he died at Normandy three weeks ago. She tells you she’s her Pop’s only helper now, ‘cuz her Ma died when she was born. But she doesn’t make you feel sad when she does. Something about her eyes, under the light of the stars, with the ocean rumbling, they make you feel hope, they make you forget bad things exist. And you walk with her, in the middle of the night, to the lighthouse. And you’ve only known her name for two hours, but, somehow she knows your secret, and, you learn she has one too. You learn it when she kisses you there, hard on the mouth. And the stars in the sky, they dull, next to the ones you see in her eyes. 


	2. Islanders Like Me

You pray. Late, each and every night, when you stumble into your upstairs room, intoxicated on salt air and Brittany’s kisses, you drop down to your knees at the foot of your bed, and you pray like you’ve never prayed before. Your Mama, she hadn’t wanted you to come to this place. She’d warned you about booze and dishonest men, about lawlessness, in this isolated place. She’d made you swear you’d stay her good girl. But she hadn’t warned you about dark black nights with the water licking your feet. She hadn’t warned you about starry eyed fishergirls. She hadn’t warned you about the tingles that run from the tips of your toes to the roots of your hair. You pray, though you know, there aren’t enough prayers in the world that can keep you from feeling the way you feel, that can stop the way you’re falling.

Each day, at five-thirty, the Alcott pulls up to it’s dock slip outside the bar. It’s Brittany’s boat, a Kettenburg, she’d told you proudly, though you have no idea what that means. You watch her, through the new panes of glass. You watch as she ties lines and orders the three boys on her crew. She walks with a swagger you’ve never seen on a lady. She commands respect. She hauls barrels of fish. She haggles with the buyers, always getting what her catch is worth, without batting her pretty eyelashes to do it. And always, always, she throws a smile through the window, because she knows you’re watching. She knows you’re waiting for when your time with her comes.

You’ve known her three weeks, but it feels like a lifetime. She stays at the bar each night until closing, drinking with her crew, and their rivals. She waits, in the shadows, as you close up each night. She holds your hand, and she kisses you on the beach out of sight. She lights a candle and she sits with you while you pull the letters from your mother and father out of your dress pocket and read them. She finds you pretty shells, and you lay them out on your dressing table when you you get home. She tells you all her secrets, and you tell her yours. She cries, for the first time, she tells you, over her brother, because she misses him so much, she dreams of bloodied bodies on a beach in France, and she’s scared that soon the war will take her friends too. Sometimes, she falls asleep in the sand, with her head in your skirts, and you take off her cap and stroke your fingers through her long blonde hair. You don’t know what you’re doing, you just know it’s wrong. But never, never in your life, has anything felt so right.

“Santana!” You hear her voice cut through a quiet Sunday morning. You sit on the edge of the dock, swinging your feet and eating the bread and jam you’d brought down for breakfast, and you turn in the direction on the sound. “There you are!”

“Good morning, Brittany.” In the daylight, you feel shy. In the daylight, everything seems bigger and scarier, somehow.

“I’ve been lookin’ everywhere for ya! We don’t go out on Sundays, And the bar’s closed. I wanna go somewhere, on the Alcott.”

“I…I’m not sure about that.” You shake your head. You’re hesitant about boats, about open water, even the ferry makes you queasy. But more than that, you’re hesitant about more daylight time with her. Because around her, you just, don’t know how you can control the urges inside of you.

“But Santana.” She reaches to offer you a hand up, and you take it. You feel those same electric sparks that are there after dark, and you look away from her. “Ya told me that you’ve never been clammin’ before, and today’s the perfect day.”

Your resistance is futile. Brittany grins at you. She steps onto her boat, and she leans against a beam, slipping her hands into her pockets and waiting. You can’t help it. You want to go. You hate that you do. But Brittany is magnetic. You can’t deny that you’re intrigued by spending a real day with the girl who kisses you in the dark. When she extends her hand again, offering you help onto the deck, you take a deep breath, you close your eyes, just for a second. You forget about priests and God and your mother, and you let her pull you aboard. You feel the press of her body against yours, before you pull away and smooth your skirt and you swallow hard. She looks at you in this way you can’t even comprehend, and again, you have to look away from you.

As she unties the lines, your eyes can’t leave her. Her fingers work quickly, you can see the muscles work in her back, and you’re lying to yourself if you say you don’t squeeze your thighs together at the sight. She switches on the motor, and a thrill rushes through you. She takes the wheel, and you’re nothing but impressed with her. She grew up here, on this island, not so far from where you did, in terms of miles, but truly a world away. She’s told you she’s never been in a school or a church, or any place of formal learning. She speaks different than anyone you know from back home. Her, and the others who’ve lived on the island for their whole lives. Who fish the water and farm the oysters. But here she is, navigating the water, as she does every day, here she is, doing something you could never dream of.

Out on the open water, Brittany takes your hand. It’s another thrill. You shouldn’t feel this way, but you do. You wish you could kiss her right there, as she looks out at the bay spread out before you. The brim of her cap shades her eyes from the bright sun, and you lift your hand to do the same. She pulls up, as close to shore as she can get and drops the anchor. When she kicks off her shoes and jumps over the side, landing in waist deep water, you’re skeptical. You certainly didn’t dress for swimming, you actually can’t swim at all.

“Hand me that burlap bag, would ya?” Brittany’s whole body wiggles in the water, and she pulls up her foot, holding a hard shell clam between her muddy toes. ”And come on down, the water’s great.”

“I think I’d rather just sit here.” You tell her, peering over the edge, and holding the bag so she can reach it.

“Aw, but where’s the fun in that? I’ve gone clammin’ hundreds’a times, I thought we came out here for ya to try.”

“I didn’t know…” You look down, sheepish, as she wades back toward you. “I though you did it on the shore, not out in the middle of the bay.”

“This is barely the middle. It’s a big bed, right here. And I didn’t bring any food, so if ya want lunch, we oughta get digging.” She grins. That grin. The one that makes you feel the things you’re not supposed to feel. You look around you, you see that there’s no one, no boats, no people, not for miles. It’s just you and her.

“I’ve never learned to swim.” You speak softly, and her grin, it fades into a soft, caring smile.

“Come here.“ She crooks her finger, and you shake your head. “C'mon, it’s barely up to my waist. I won’t let ya drown, Santana.”

You don’t mean to, but you swoon at her words. Sometimes, you look at her, and she feels like those heroes in the books you used to read, late at night, under the covers of your bed while your sisters slept soundly across the room. Like Heathcliff or Prince Charming. You look at her, standing in the water, her sleeves rolled up, the brim of her hat shadowing her face, and she looks dashing, handsome almost, but underneath, you know, she’s so much better. She’s soft, she’s beautiful, she’s something so much more than those storybook characters. She’s a woman. And she’s here, she’s real, and she’s extending her hand to you, and you swallow, trying to wet your dry throat.

“I promise, pretty lady. Take my hand.”

“Brittany.” You’re glad your cheeks are flushed from the sun, because then she can’t see the way they heat at her words. Then maybe, maybe you can still keep these bubbling feelings hidden in the daylight. You kick off your shoes though. You take her hand, you take it, and you yelp, just a little when you slip into the cool water of the bay.

“See, I told ya. It’s nice right.”

“It is.” You agree, though your skirt sticks to your legs, and the salty water stings your skin a little. You agree, because she’s still holding your hand. You agree, because the cool waves and the sun and the wet mud beneath your feet, it all feels better than you could gave imagined.

“Good. Now there ain’t no such thing as free lunch, so ya oughta start workin’ for it. Dig your toes in real good, there’s lots of the suckers down there.”

It’s the most fun you’ve ever had. You can’t even lie. You shriek with joy when you feel your first little neck, like Brittany tells you they’re called, and she wraps her at, around your waist to steady you while you stand on one foot to retrieve it. By the time you’ve filled the small bag, you’re filthy. Bay mud is streaked across your teeth, your white blouse is soaked through to your undergarments, but you don’t think you’ve ever cared less about it. Not when Brittany is tramping toward the shore. Not when she’s pulling a light from her breast pocket and starting a fire with the bramble she gathers and emptying the bag atop it. You sit on the shore and you watch her poke at it. You watch her take off her cap and let her hair tumble down to her waist. The gold of her tresses, is shines in the sunshine,  _she_ shines in the sun, and she grins again, pointing to the fire, where the shells have begun to pop open.

“We’re gonna have a feast of ‘em, that’s for sure.”

You burn your fingers and your tongue, pulling the briny meat from the piping hot shells, but it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted, truly, and Brittany beams when you tell her as much. She watches you as you eat, affection coloring her face, and it makes your insides twist. When the clams are gone, and your bellies are full, her hand finds a place to rest on top of yours in the sand. She kisses her shoulder, quick, like the secret this is, and you find her lips, just as quick, just as quiet. Your stomach drops, the same way it always does. The way you still can’t tell if it’s a good or a bad feeling, and she just laces her fingers with yours and leans back.

“They say there’s gonna be a bridge there in a few years, ya know.” She points out in the distance, and she sulks a little. Internally, but you can still feel her distaste.

“Is it gonna disturb the fish?”

“Nah, the fish’ll be fine, but that Moses guy, he wants to ruin everything.”

“Moses?” You purse your lips, and you tense, thinking of the parting of the Red Sea, thinking of your Sunday school teacher in her stiff collared dress, thinking of Father Tomas. Thinking of that imposing crucifix in the front of the church back home.

“Robert Moses. He’s the one buildin’ up all the roads across the water. It’s gonna be more and more summer people here, all the time. It’s gonna wreck the whole way we do things here. They’re not islanders like us, not with their flashy bathin’ suits and their layin’ on the beach to tan. We’ve got our own world here, and we like it that way. The people that come, they used to come because it’s  _private_  here.” Her eyes, they flick down to where she holds your hand. She doesn’t think you noticed, you don’t think, but you do, you definitely do. “I don’t think it will be, not for long.”

“I’m sorry, Brittany.” You worry your bottom lip between your teeth. “I’m sorry for being summer people too.”

“You’re not though, not really. You’re a worker, just like. Sure, you’re not from here, and ya wear clothes fancier than the rest of us, but ya fit in real nice. I wouldn’t mind if ya stayed forever.”

“Well, thank you. That feels like a big compliment.”

“The biggest.” She nods, very emphatically. “I sure like ya a lot, Santana. And I’m glad Mr. Edja brought you on over. Ya make me feel a whole lot happier, in a real sad time for me.”

“You’ve made me feel much happier too. And much more at home too. It helps with the homesickness, that’s for certain.”

“Good.” She lifts up your hand. She kisses the inside of your palm, another secret, among so many. “We oughta head back now. Gotta have Sunday dinner with my Pop. But if ya want, we’ll head down to the lighthouse later on, and have a look at all the jellies that have washed up on shore.”

“Okay, yeah.” You nod. Looking in her eyes, blue as the ocean. Falling, falling, more and more, each minute you spend around her. Falling more and more, though you know you shouldn’t. “I’d like that a lot.”


	3. Maybe That's a Start

True to her word, she teaches you to swim. Late at night, in the bay, still as glass, under the light of the moon. She sees you in your undergarments and your slip, and you see her in a bathing suit that you wouldn’t have expected. Bright red, even in the moonlight, and, you think you blush ever redder. In the water, she coaxes you, her strong hands holding you when you scare yourself. And you learn, you learn quick, maybe because you look forward to the moments after, the moments on the sand, lying on a blanket, wrapped in towels. Your head, it lands on her shoulder sometimes, more than sometimes, and you don’t move it. You’re comfortable there, while she plays with your fingers, you’re comfortable, in the stillness of the night, where all you hear is the roar of the ocean on the other side of the island, the soft lapping of the bay against the rocky shore. You’re comfortable with  _her_ , and the screaming in your mind, the sounds of Hail Mary’s, and imposing church bells, they quiet, until the only sound from within you is the beating of your heart, quickening, in Brittany’s presence.

It’s on the shore of the bay where you give yourself to each other, fully. You’re terrified, terrified, when the kissing you do turns to something more. But you give in to the need that takes over, you give into the desire that courses through you when your barely clothed body is pressed against hers. You fumble, you shake, you have no idea what it is that you’re doing, but, you work your fingers inside of her bathing suit. You shiver, as you watch her face contort in pleasure. You kiss her, and you swallow her moans, threatening to cut through the stillness of the night. You tense, after, when she rolls on top of you. She freezes, she looks deep into your eyes, her pupils, black as the night sky, and she doesn’t touch you. Not until your breathing slows, not until you nod, slowly, and she grabs your hand, and she holds it, she holds it tight, while she brings you to a greater bliss than you’ve ever known.

This thing you’re doing, it doesn’t have a name, not one that you know. Your first time on the beach, it certainly isn’t your last. Your nights, they still involve walks, or swims, and certainly the sharing of each other’s inner selves, but now they also involve this  _physical intimacy._ You’d call her your lover, but, the connotation of that word, it terrifies you. And this thing, it’s not like what you’ve read in even the most risqué storybooks you’ve come across. There aren’t tousled sheets, and tumbling onto mattresses, and perfume between your thighs. You’ve never seen the inside of her bedroom, and she’s never seen the inside of yours. But this thing between you, it’s raw, and though you loathe to admit it- much as you crave her constantly, much as you smell at taste her, even when you’re apart- it’s real. And should you be damning yourself to to hell with each and every desperate kiss, you find yourself wondering, as you drop your knees and say your rosary, asking for forgiveness for your sins, if perhaps a one way ticket to the deepest circle wouldn’t be worth it for a lifetime of stolen moments with this stunning fishergirl.

Mr. Edja wants to keep you on, even as the end of summer draws closer. You’ve been mostly running the bar on your own, and he plans to keep it open for the locals through the winter. He warns you about hurricane season, about the harsh, isolated winters on the island, but he tells you he’ll pay for your trip back to the city to see your Mama and the kids, and to gather your winter things. He tells you he’ll pay you forty-eight cents an hour, at least a nickel more than you’d make in the city. You tell Brittany that you’re considering it, and you know, you know that she tries to hide the flicker of excitement that passes over her features. You’d by lying if you said her reaction didn’t excite you too, but this decision, you have to make it for you and only you. You call your mother, a rare treat, hearing her voice, since there’s no phone in the bar, and finding one at all on the island isn’t the easiest feat. Your sisters, the scramble to the phone up speak with you, each bring allotted just a brief moment. Your heart, it aches with homesickness, it always does, except when you’re with Brittany, and you try not to cry when you hang up the phone. You try not to cry when your Mama whispers to you in Spanish that she misses you something terrible. But you fail, you fail really miserably when she tells you the decision is your choice, but the money, it helps.

You’re glad the next day is Sunday. You’re glad you have a day off to just, rest a little.

The sadness, it hit you harder than you’d thought, hearing Carlota’s little voice asking you if you’ll be back before her first day of school, hearing the baby, who’s barely a baby, and who probably doesn’t even remember you, whimper in the background. You miss them, you miss them terribly, and the decision, it’s so difficult for you to make. You know you could find some sort of job back home. But the money, it’s so much better, and, though you try, you try harder than anything to deny it, you’re also afraid of what missing Brittany would feel like. You’re afraid of returning to a world where she isn’t. You’re afraid of when the boys begin to come home. And you’re most afraid of what you feel is inevitable. Of having to give yourself to one of them the way you gave yourself to Brittany. Of having to marry one of them and bear their children. Of being who it is that you’re supposed to me. A good Catholic girl. A wife. A mother.

Like you always are on sunny Sundays, you’re out on the dock. You watch the leisure sailors out on their boats. You hear the whooping and hollering of people disembarking the ferry. Captain Pierce, he waves to you and tips his hat as the ferry pulls out again. He always does, though he has no idea, really, who you are. You’re the bar girl, you’re not, whatever it is you are to Brittany, because  _friend,_ that doesn’t feel truly right either. She’s more than that. And your cheeks burn, they burn hot, as you turn your attention back to the pages of  _A Tree Grows In Brooklyn,_ and you wonder, you wonder, if he’d be so friendly if he knew. And you’re startled, just a little, when you feel a presence behind you. But you turn your head, and your jaw, it drops of it’s own accord.

“Mornin’.” Brittany grins. She’s all teeth and blue eyes, and, like you’ve never seen her before.  She wears a navy and white dress, and her hair, it’s all down in loose curls, like she’d set it last night before bed. She offers you a hand up, and you stand, taking all of her in.

“Brittany, good morning.” Your throat, it feels dry, and you swallow over and over again, trying to moisten it.

“What do ya think?” She wiggles a little in front of you, and you break into a big smile. “I borrowed it from Norma Jean Karofsky, and she helped me with my hair. I’ve never looked fancy-like, but I wanted to look real pretty for ya.”

“You’re always pretty in my book.” You cast your eyes down, shy, and you feel hers boring into you. “But I like the dress, it suits you. Are you headed somewhere swanky?”

“I was hopin’ we both might be. Davey’s takin’ his dingy over to Duffy’s in the Grove, and I wanted to ask ya to join us. I think you’ll like it a whole lot over there.”

“What’s over there?” You ask, though you know it doesn’t really matter. You know you’re apt to say yes, if it means spending the whole day with her. Even if her crewmate will be with you, and it means you can’t do what you’d like to.

“Just a bar, open on Sundays, and some dancin’.”

“And David won’t mind if I join you? I don’t want to intrude on your outing.”

“Oh no, he was goin’ over there without me, and I asked him if we could join. But if ya wanna so somethin’ else, I’ll tell him to go on ahead.”

“No. No.” You swallow again. Brittany wrings her hands, and you know, you know she put a lot of thought into this, into the getting dressed and the planning. And you want to go, you do, though you’ve never spent any time with her friends before. “Let me just put my book away and grab my things, and then we’ll go.”

You hurry up to your room, you leave your book on your nightstand, and you check yourself in the mirror, making sure you look nice enough to leave. Clutch in hand, you head back downstairs, and Brittany leans against the wall, fidgeting with her hands, finding it strange without pockets to put them in. You smile at her, and she loops her arm through yours, appropriate as you can be, out in daylight. You want to kiss her, you want to kiss her so badly, but you know you can’t, so you settle for this. She leads you to David’s little boat, and he stands on the dock, tugging on his necktie in the August heat.

“Mornin’ Miss Santana.” He nods and tips his hat to you, and you return the greeting, accepting his hand when he helps you aboard the boat.

Brittany squeezes beside you, and hidden by your skirts, she clutches your hand. It thrills you and terrifies you all at once, her callused hand in yours, with David only a few feet away, but what you want,  _all_ you want, is to get closer to her. So you do, in the open water. You slide, so your shoulders brush. You slide, so even with the wind in your hair, you can feel Brittany’s breath on your face, you can hear her whispers in your ear, you can sense her eyes on you.

Cherry Grove, on the surface, looks very much like Leja Beach. There are the same wood framed houses like where you know Brittany lives, though you’ve never been near. There are the same crowds of people, albeit, smaller, on the dock, while David ties the boat and Brittany helps you out. There’s the same merriment, the same sound of the birds, the same bay. But, as you walk toward this bar they’re taking you to, you realize, almost immediately, the things are very different. You realize, that there are people, who hold hands, there are people who kiss each other, and, none of them are of opposite sexes. These people, they’re all, though you cringe at the word, given your own recent revelations,  _queer._

“Brittany, what  _is_ this place?” You whisper to her, and you realize, you realize, you’ve never dropped her hand. You realize it, and again, you look around.

“It’s a safe place, Santana.” She promises you. “It’s a private place.”

“But. But what about David?”  

“Davey comes here for his own reasons.” Brittany shakes her head, she doesn’t betray his trust, though you think you understand. “What happens in this place, it stays here.”

“I don’t…” You feel bile rise in your throat at the brazenness of these people. Doing their secret things in daylight. It’s not something you’ve witnessed before, and Brittany, she strokes the inside of your wrist, reminding you again that she’s still holding your hand.

“We don’t have to do anything ya don’t want to do, pretty lady.” She whispers still, and her words, they make chills run down your spine. The good ones, though your mind tries to tell you the opposite. “How ‘bout we just go on inside and get ourselves a drink?”

“Okay.” You nod, trying to let your uneasiness dissipate. “Okay, let’s.”

She finds you a table in the bar, and when she leaves you there, waving off your efforts to pay, you take it all in. It’s mostly men, dancing with other men to the sound of Harry James tinkling through the gramophone, but there are a few women too. Women in skirts, women in pants. Women who dance together, and who hold each other close. This strangeness within you, you try and swallow it, and when Brittany comes back, bright eyed, and carrying a Dewars for herself and a Gordon’s sour for you, you take an unladylike gulp, trying to burn away your secondhand mortification.

“I didn’t take ya hear to embarrass you.” Brittany plays with the ribbon on her dress, and she doesn’t look up at your eyes. “I just thought, maybe bein’ around other people like, other people who, do the things we do, it might make you feel a little better.”

“What’s making you think I need to feel better? I feel just fine.” You snap at her, and then, as her face falls further, you immediately feel bad.

“I hear ya mumbling that  _blessed are thou among sinners_ stuff sometimes. I might not’ve gone to a church, but I know what a sinner is, and I’ve been around here enough to know that people think the queers are just that. I don’t want ya to feel bad bein’ around me. 'Cuz it sure makes me feel good bein’ around you.”

“It’s not- Being around you doesn’t make me feel bad, Brittany.” You find her hand on the table, and you place yours over it. Talking about this, it’s what you’d promised yourself you wouldn’t do, because that’s where things get sticky. But you care too much for this girl to see her sad. “Being around you makes me feel better than anything else. It’s just, I feel bad because it’s not supposed to feel this good. I’m supposed to go on home after this and marry a nice boy. But I don’t  _want_ to. Why would I want that, when I’m here, and you kiss me, and it makes me see stars?”

“So don’t.”

“It’s not that simple.” You sigh.

“Seems it to me. There’s a whole room full of people here who ain’t marryin’ who they’re supposed to.”

“This isn’t the real world though. Boys can’t marry boys, and girls can’t marry girls.”

“Ya know, you’re real smart, with all your books, but I think ya need to open your eyes a little more. All these people are in the real world too. In your city, even in your old school. Just because they’re hiding doesn’t mean they’re not there. And besides, I’m not askin’ ya to marry me, pretty lady. Maybe for a dance, or a kiss, but you think too much about stuff in the future. There’s a ring in my brother’s drawer that he was gonna give to Norma Jean when he came back a hero, but that never got to happen. Why live for that maybe, rather than the right now which ya already know is real?”

“I-” You’re stunned, speechless, really. Because she makes things seem so easy. She makes you want to believe they are, though you know that you should know better. “I think I’m gonna need another gin.”

You drink a second, and then a third gin, all while Brittany holds your hand and sips at her first scotch. You begin to feel light in the head, and your wariness toward the scene, it wanes. Out of the corner of your eye, you see David, dancing with a blue eyed boy. They’re smiling, they’re laughing, and your muddled mind tries to make sense of how that could possibly be something wrong. How any of this could be something wrong. Brittany keeps a close eye on you, she’s never seen you drink before, and you feel this nagging tug of desire at the pit of your stomach. She’s beautiful, so beautiful. In her rolled up pants and her wool cap, or here, like this, in her polka dotted dress and her blonde ringlets. You think about leaning over the table and kissing her, right there, but you don’t think you’re ready to announce yourself like that, not quite yet. Instead, you make to stand, your grip on her hand tight, and she swallows down the rest of her drink, before wrapping an arm around your waist and keeping you close as you make your way through the throng of couples dancing.

“This okay?” She looks deep in your eyes, searching for consent, as she wraps her arms around your waist. You can only nod, as you snake yours around her neck. You can only nod, because you hadn’t realized, how much you’d ever dreamed of this. You hadn’t realized, as you loved her in the darkness, how good it would feel to love her in the light.

“Perfect.”

Holding her tight, you sway. The sound of Bing Crosby fills your ears,  _would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar._ Your knees, they’re weak, and not just from the white liquor. They’re weak, because of the way she smiles at you, soft and adoring. They’re weak, from the scent of oatmeal soap and saltwater and cigar smoke. They’re weak, because her fingertips tickle your back, and being so close to her, it always makes you just a little dizzy. You don’t fight the urge you feel, the one to rest your head against her chest, and when you do, you hear her sharp intake of breath, and she holds you, closer, closer.

You dance away the afternoon. When your buzz begins to fade, you switch from slow dancing to swing. Brittany shocks you with her impressive Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, and she just shrugs when you comment on it. Outside of the window, the sun begins to set, and more couples spill out onto the porch that wraps around. Taking you by the hand again, Brittany leads you out.  She doesn’t stop where everyone else gathers, she knows that really, you’re still a little uncomfortable, especially not being wrapped up in your dancing. So she takes you down to the beach. Maybe it’s silly, but, that feels like  _your_ place. And you’re comfortable there, as she tucks her dress beneath her, and pats the sand beside her for you to sit. You smile, looking at how her golden hair shines in the pink light of the sunset. You smile, and you sit beside her, curling your whole body into her.

“How ya doin’, dolly?” She strokes your hair, and you swoon, against your efforts, hearing her call you that.

“I’m feeling really good.”

“Santana, there’s somethin’ I’ve been wantin’ to say.”

“Hmm?” You turn yourself so you’re looking in her eyes. You see flecks of gold, flickering, gorgeous.

“Ever since I met you.” She slips into a serious voice, her words, so much more pronounced than they usually are. “I’ve been feelin’ so different than ever. And I think, now, that maybe I’ve been fallin’ in love, all this time, with you.”

“Brittany.” Your mind, it’s screaming, screaming, screaming. But your heart, it pounds behind your ribs. Your stomach, it bubbles and gurgles.

“It’s alright if you don’t feel it back, I just wanted to say it anyway, how I’ve been feeling. 'Cuz you’re somethin’ real special, and I’m just glad you’re around, even if it might not be for too much longer.”

“I- Brittany. I don’t know what to say.”

“Just don’t say that you hate me. Please.”

“I could never hate you.” You swallow hard, and you draw in the sand with your toes. The things you feel for this girl. They’re too much. They’re too fast. And they make you want to run, run far away, to where it’s safe. But her eyes, they hold you to your spot. Her eyes, they’re pleading with you not to run. So you don’t. You stay, and you lean your head on her shoulder, watching the sun sink into the ocean. You sit there, silent, with her. You swallow the tears in the back of your throat. Because it’s everything you want, and everything you shouldn’t. And you’re torn. Torn between staying on this island, and going home. Torn between remaining silent, and telling her how you feel. Because you’re not sure, you’re just not sure, whether the worse sin is in feeling it, acting upon it, or speaking of it out loud.


	4. Love Will Not Break Your Heart, But Dismiss Your Fears

After  _that_ night, you go home. You’re running, you know. From the feelings inside of you, from Brittany herself, from what she’d said means for the two of you. But also, because the summer is nearly over, and Mr. Edja needs your decision. He sends you home to your Mama, when you tell him you’re not sure- because you’re not sure about anything, not anymore- so you can talk to her in person. With seashells wrapped in day old newsprint and sand still hidden in the pockets of your skirts- sand that got there from activities you won’t think about- you board the ferry. Captain Pierce is there. He waves to you, his usual jovial manner, something you admire him for especially, since you know of his two great sadnesses. You know it’s just him and Brittany. And you look out the window at the gentle waves of the bay. You look out the window, and you swear, in the distance, you see Brittany’s boat. You look out the window and you swear she’s there on the horizon, barking orders at her crew.

You didn’t say goodbye to her. You didn’t know what to say at all, truly. You’d seen her last the night you’d gone to the Grove. After you’d upchucked over the side of David’s boat- from the booze, maybe, or from the words that swirled in your mind, more likely.  _I love you._ She’d said those three words to you. Words girls aren’t supposed to say to other girls. Feelings girls aren’t supposed to  _feel_ for other girls. But you  _do,_ you do feel them. When you’re with her, when you think of her, when a love song comes on the radio in the bar. In wake, in sleep. You feel them, but you can’t say them out loud. The kissing, the touching, the  _intimate_ things you do together, they’re bad enough. But to speak the words out loud like that-  _the sin, it’s not in the thing, it’s in the talking about it out loud,_ your  _abuelita_ always warns- to express such brazen feeling, there aren’t enough novenas to wipe them from your lips. So you leave, without a word, beyond the muttered  _thank you,_ that night when she helped you out of David’s boat, and she walked you to the door. So you leave, not knowing, whether you’ll come back again, or have Mr. Edja send along your few remaining things, when he finds a new girl to work the bar. You leave, the memory of Brittany, in her blue dress, the memory of starlit nights, burned behind your eyes.

The railroad train, it carries you back to the city. You stare out that window too. But you don’t see Brittany in the pine trees. You don’t see Brittany in the housing developments that seem to have sprung up everywhere, over the summer. You don’t see her there, but you feel her, under your skin. You feel the ghost of suspender straps at the tip of you fingers. You feel the tickle of blonde  hair on your neck. You feel the press of pink lips, soft, soft against your own. You feel it, though it’s only in your mind. You feel it, and you fight your eyes to say open. You fight them, because if they close, if you see her face there, in the place it’s burned forever, you know you won’t even bother to fight yourself anymore.

You get yourself downtown to the apartment you’ve spent most of your life in. It’s noisy, and raucous, the things that you’d ached for while you were gone. But everything feels just a little off, the whole time you’re there. Of course, you’re elated to be in your mother’s embrace. You’re elated to feel yourself surrounded by Spanish words, by the smell of your _abuela’s_  cooking, by the kids, running around the apartment and clamoring for your attention. You’ve missed them, you’ve missed them all so much. But you feel all wrong in your city. You feel wrong, sleeping in the bed you’ve slept in most of your life, little Mariana, snuggled into your side, your fingers, ticking her back to sleep when she has nightmares. You feel wrong, with the crucifix above the door, bearing down upon you. You feel all wrong in this place, as you dream dreams of a blonde fisher girl, eyes full of starlight.

By the end of your alloyed time there, it’s easier than you’d thought it would be to make the decision. It’s easier than you’d thought to know where you should be. Sure, your mind, it’s telling you one thing. It’s telling you to stay in Manhattan, to get a job making uniforms in the factory on William Street, your own help to the war effort. It’s telling you to tear yourself away from that other island now, before you’re in too deep. But your heart, your heart knows better. It knows that you can’t. It knows that you need to return to her, because you may not be able to say the words, you may be terrified of their repercussions, but you don’t feel their sentiment any less, and without her, you feel incomplete.

So you go back to Fire Island. Early on a grey Tuesday morning, just after than sun should have risen, you board the train. Your Mama comes with you to the station to say goodbye. She kisses your cheeks, and she presses a cloth wrapped bowl of rice and beans into your hands- the last of the aluminum foil making up tanks or bullets, or whatever it is they do with all that scrap. You don’t know when you’ll come back, it might be months again, so she takes you in, her hands on your shoulders, and tears in her eyes. She thanks you, again, for doing this, for helping her take care of the little ones, but you feel a nagging guilt in the pit of your stomach. The first time you’d left home, that was your sole agenda, but this time, this time as you leave again, even with the money you’ll send back to them, you can’t help but feel selfish for going, you can’t help but feel that this is all for you, for you and the deeds you shouldn’t be doing, the feelings you shouldn’t be feeling.

You work the afternoon, skies, still grey. There’s a lingering nausea in your stomach, the choppy water as you’d crossed the bay making you queasy, and Captain Pierce’s warning to  _stay safe out there, ya hear, girl,_ making you queasier still. The whole bar is a flurry, talking of a big storm coming. But you don’t have time to think about that. You’re too busy, pouring drinks, dealing with the disarray the absent minded Mr. Edja left in his wake. You’re too busy to think of what’s brewing. You’re too busy, even to think of your own confusion, until you see her. Sitting with Davey and Michael, at their usual table. She smiles, soft, unthreatening, but she doesn’t come up to order her drink. She’s giving you space, you think. And maybe, maybe she’s also angry with you, that you left. Maybe she’s hurt, that you never told her if and when you were coming back. Disheartened that you didn’t even say goodbye. That thought, hurting her, it hurts you too, and you have to swallow the lump in your throat every time you look at her. You have to avoid her eyes as much as possible, because seeing her sad, it makes it too hard for you to work.

While you close up the bar, you notice her, loitering outside. She’s alone, you can tell, and you wonder, you wonder if she’s truly waiting there for you. You wonder, if you’ll go back to your old routine. You wonder, if you’re strong enough to do that, knowing what you know, feeling what you feel. When you’ve finished wiping down the bar top and setting the bottles back in their rightful places, you look over everything once more, and you slip out the door. Before you can turn to her, you have to take a breath. You have to center yourself, because just feeling her in your space, it’s already overwhelming. But seeing her eyes, feeling her breath on your face, her lips, maybe, on your lips, it might crumble your willpower. You’ve missed her, you’ve missed her, so much, in just a few days, and though maybe you should, you can’t hate yourself for feeling that.

“You came back.” Her voice cuts through the air, vibrating over the crashing waves of the bay against the dock, over the roar of the angry ocean across the island.

“I did.” You turn to face her. She blinks slowly, translucent eyelids fluttering. That picture you’d kept in your mind, Brittany in the blue dress, it fades away, in favor of her true picture. Askew cap, suspenders, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Her cocky grin is missing though, replaced by this new sort of look. Not quite wonderment, but something of the sort, disbelief perhaps, wonderment’s less optimistic cousin. “I went home to see my family, and to think about things. And I decided to come back. To stay on for the winter.”

“I wasn’t sure ya would.”

“Neither was I.” You tell her, open, honest. Because still, still, she makes you feel like you can tell her anything. Even when you’re not sure you truly know anything for yourself. “But, I couldn’t stay away.”

“The money’s good.” She shrugs, hands in her pockets. The urge to kiss her then, right on the dock, it’s hard, so hard to resist.

“Among other things.” You mumble, best you can do, and her eyebrows, they shoot up, only for a brief moment, before they settle again. “Where’s your boat?”

“We pulled it outta the water earlier. It ain’t gonna be pretty when this storm hits, not takin’ any chances.”

“You really think it’ll be that bad?” Your eyes widen, a little, in alarm. You’d been gone, you suppose, when the talk had started, but earlier in the bar, you’d figured it was just gossip, that it wouldn’t be worse than the other rainstorms you’d seen earlier in the summer.

“September storms’re usually bad news. I was too young to worry anythin’ real about thirty-eight, but lookin’ back, seein’ the damage still left behind, it was bad. We’re always real prepared though. Me and Pop start storing up ‘round the first week of August. He got the windows boarded up this mornin’ too, before his first run on the boat, takin’ a lot of the fair weather folks back to the mainland.”

“I-I didn’t know about doing anything to prepare.” You stammer, feeling a cold type of fear settle into you bones. Brittany and her father, they’re salt of the earth type, she doesn’t worry much about nature, while you jump at a particularly loud cricket in the dunes. If she’s alarmed, then, then-

“That’s why I’m waitin’ here. I knew ya wouldn’t’ve, it’s your first one. Ya think I’d leave ya out right on the water like this? All by yourself?”

“I just figured you were waiting to speak with me. About, what happened before I left.”

“I’m not gonna force ya to talk, Santana. I did all the talkin’ I had to do, and ya know how I feel. When you’re ready, you’ll come to me.” Her voice feels, salty, almost, a subtle sting to it, the the ocean on wounded flesh, and you feel your cheeks warm. You know that you ran, without a goodbye, and she knows it too. But, she’s good. She’s so good, that she’s come to make sure you were taken care of anyway. “Hurricane’s not the place for a newcomer, ‘specially on the water, where the bay’s likely to flood. I came to take you home with me.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’ve got the bar to watch, and-”

“It’s not a choice.” She narrows her eyes. “It ain’t about whatever happened between us. It’s about keepin’ you safe out here. Mr. Edja shoulda seen to that before he went back to the city.” She grits her teeth a little at that, and though you feel a little defensive of your boss, you keep quiet. “Davey’s comin’ down with some boards later on, he’ll take care of the windows here, but you’re not risking your life for some clapboard building. Get what ya need, enough for a few days, and anything ya’d hate to have washed out to sea, just in case, and I’ll be waiting down here for you.”

It shocks you, how easily you bend to her will. But then, it shouldn’t. The thought of this storm has your insides in a tailspin. Brittany had showed you the damage from the thirty-eight storm weeks ago, and being alone in your house, lifted up, maybe, like Dorothy in _The Wizard of Oz,_ sans ruby slippers, reduces you nearly to tears. So you turn away from her, those eyes, following after you, and you hurry up the stairs to your little apartment. You try not to think of spending the dark of night in close quarters with the girl that you have, these, feelings that you can’t talk about for. You try not to think of her, noble and good, waiting for you outside, even when she’s upset with you. You try not to think of things that make you fall, fall faster for her. The same type of things that you’d been down on your knees in church with your  _abuelita_  and your mother, begging God’s forgiveness for not two days ago. You try, but you fail. It’s all you can think of, truly, as you quickly pack your small valise with your things. Your nightclothes, your day clothes, your toiletries, the family portrait, taken just before you father left for war that sits on your nightstand, the brooch your grandmother gave you on your sixteenth birthday, that most precious piece of jewelry, and, in a final thought, just before you lock the door behind you, the bowl of rice and beans your Mama sent back with you. Because you figure, maybe sharing the meal with Brittany is the only gesture of gratitude you can offer.

She’s sitting on the edge of the dock, when you come down again, and she’s quick to take your belongings, though you attempt to thwart her efforts. She leads you down a wooden pathway through the dark dune brush, and you jump at every sound. Every crash of the ocean, every creak of a board beneath your feet. You find yourself wishing she’d take your hand, that she’d tell you it will all be alright, but she doesn’t. She just moves quickly, leading you through, while you hold the bowl tight in your grasp, until you reach a two story fishing cottage, boards covering the windows, and a boat, her boat, tethered in sand behind it.

“Home sweet home.” There’s a strange chirp to her voice, one you hardly recognize, and she opens the door, just as the first raindrops fall, big and heavy, on the wooden walk.

It’s strange, the moment you enter. You and Brittany, you’ve been intimate. Brittany, she might be the best friend you’ve ever had in your life. And Brittany, she’s told you that she loves you. But you’ve never been in her house. It’s dark, you can’t see a thing, so you breathe in. You smell it, strange as it may seem, you inhale this place she comes from, and you’d know, even if she didn’t lead you here, that this was Brittany’s. When she lights the lamp, the old fashioned type, since much of the island still hasn’t been wired, it’s not what you’d expected at all, save for the photographs of her, you assume, as a small child, an older boy carrying her on his shoulders, her brother. The photographs, of her father and mother, the woman she’d never met, on their wedding day. But the rest, it’s mostly sparse, lonely, almost. Threadbare quilts covering the backs of furniture, dust, you think, in the curtains. It doesn’t look impoverished, just dated, unkempt, like the people who live there come and go so quickly, they hardly notice the work that needs to be done inside. You’re taking it all in, this place where Brittany lives, when a fat cat waddles down the stairs, and Brittany seems to light up in his presence.

“Lord Tubbington.” She smiles, setting your belongings on the floor, and lifting him into her arms. “You’re already inside, I was afraid I’d have to send a search party out for ya. We’ve got a guest tonight, it’s Santana’s first storm out here, so she’s gonna ride it out with me and you.”

“Where’s your father?” You venture to ask, setting your dish down on the heavy oak table behind you. “He won’t be coming home tonight?”

“He knows I got the Homefront covered.” She tells you, and you think her voice hitches, maybe at the reminder of the war that still rages overseas. The war that took her brother, the war that keeps your father far from home. “He’ll stay down at the terminal, him and Salty, the dog help out the Coast Guard. People do foolish things in a storm.”

“I’d bet on that.” You speak softly, looking into her eyes, before you quickly cast your gaze down again. “What can I do to help?”

“Not we can do now. We’ve just gotta stay inside and ride it out I got all the candles out, darker'n usual in here without the moonlight form the windows. Hauled down some extra blankets from the attic earlier. Now we just sit tight for awhile. There’s a deck of cards, if ya wanna play?”

“Sure.” You nod. “But are you hungry? I brought some of my  _abuelita’s_  rice and beans back…from home?”

“ _Abuelita?”_ She screws up her forehead, and you remember. You remember that she doesn’t know your other world. She doesn’t know about Spanish words, flying across a crowded apartment. She doesn’t know about your Mama working in the laundry and getting called words you think no one should say- though that, maybe she understands, just a little, about that, since she’s heard the things they say about Michael, though he’s not Japanese at all. She doesn’t know much about the crosses and the prayers and the rosaries, so many rosaries,  _Hail Mary, full of grace._ She doesn’t know a lot of things, though, you still thinks she knows you better than anyone.

“My grandmother, it’s-”

“Spanish.” She nods. “I forget. Ya never speak it here.”

“I have no one to speak it with.”

“You could speak it to me.” She offers, quiet, hesitant, and you feel that twisting in your chest, tighter, tighter,

“That wouldn’t be fair, you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying.”

“There’s lotsa things I don’t understand.” Brittany shrugs, and a shudder runs through you. Because you know, you know, the thing she understands least of all. You know that it’s you.

Your conversation ceases. You spoon rice and beans from the bowl that belongs in your home in the city, onto chipped porcelain plates, blue and white, showing scenes of years past. Brittany pours milk into glasses. You sit across from each other at the table, and the only exchange is Brittany’s compliment of your grandmother’s meal. You play cards in silence too. Brittany deals, and you watch the way her hands fly in awe. You figured, really, that she’d played before, everyone does at the dock, though you’re supposed to keep them from playing in the bar, but seeing her, it’s different. Seeing her, fingers shuffling, practiced ease, it makes your skin flush. She’s different. She’s so different from you. And she’s the same. She’s the same, in all the wrong ways.

The rain falls harder outside. You hear it pattering against the metal door. You hear the angry ocean. You hear the wind whip through chokecherries and rattle the shutters. You hate it. You hate it so much. And you stiffen your spine, trying to keep from trembling visibly. Maybe it’s silly and childish, but this storm has you beside yourself, that fear of the unknown really taking you.

“Gotta keep on the main floor of the house.” Brittany tells you. “Pop says it’s the safest. Glad we finally got ridda the outside toilet last year. Maybe someday we’ll get wired out here, but an outhouse was a real bitch in the rain.” She shakes her head, then realizes, she never uses her 'sailor mouth,’ not when speaking directly to you, though you’ve heard profanities fly from her lips after a few beers with Michael and Davey. “Sorry, I try to keep my mouth clean in the presence of a lady.”

“Britt.” You swallow. Her calling you a lady, it’s too much right now. “You’re a lady too.”

“Might be a girl, but ya know I’m not a lady. You’re the one who fusses about what’s proper and such.”

“You’ve always been a proper lady to me.” You speak it, soft, soft, avoiding her eyes. Avoiding the way she stares at you, contemplating what’s next to say.

“I missed you, ya know.” She blinks, like maybe she’s trying to keep back emotion, but you’re not sure. “When I thought ya left without saying goodbye t'me…”

“I’m sorry.” It’s all you can say. “You’re the only person around here I’d have had to say goodbye to, but I was really confused, and I had to make a decision, about staying or going, and I thought seeing you would make it harder.”

“Because?” Really, it’s not a question. She knows why. But the reminder, it makes you bite down hard on your tongue. Feeling, feeling, all the things you’re not supposed to feel.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Brittany breathes in deep. “Well. I’m still glad ya came back.”

“I am too.” The air crackles around you, and you’re convinced, really, that you’re creating electricity. You’re convinced, until the largest bolt of lightening flashes through the singular pane of glass above the door that remains unboarded, and you jump in alarm. It feels too close, too real, too much. The storm, and Brittany both.

“Sorry ya didn’t wait a few days, I bet.”

“I guess you just…end up where you’re supposed to be.”

Brittany shows you to the bathroom, the new peach tile a stark comparison to the rest of the house. A little hesitant, you slip out of your skirt and stockings. Brittany has touched you in ways no one else ever has before, but, the thought of her seeing in you in your satin pajamas, it ignites something strange within you. This isn’t Freshman year sleepovers with the girls back home, before the infamous December morning that changed the world, yours and the larger both. This is you, in close quarters with your…your  _lover._ There isn’t another word, try as you might to find one somewhere in your extensive vocabulary. The things you’ve done with Brittany, they make her your lover, despite her gender, and your hands shake as you button up your top, your body shivers, as cool satin brushes your legs.

She’s there, when you step out of the bathroom, wearing pajamas much like yours. Green, to your purple, the cut a little different, but, not what you’d expected at all. Truthfully, you don’t know  _what_ you’d expected her to wear, but seeing her like this, long hair braided down her back, bending over to pile blankets and pillows on the floor, you feel your throat go dry. You swallow, trying to moisten it, but it doesn’t work. Not when she looks up at you, face bathed in the low light of the kerosene lamp that sits on the side table. Not when she offers you a soft smile, while she sets up two beds of blankets on the floor.

With a few words of goodnight, you settle down into the makeshift bed Brittany offers to you. You pull the blankets up to your chin, and you stare at the cracks in the ceiling, once your eyes adjust to the darkness. You avoid looking over at Brittany, probably already asleep. You avoid seeing her face in the night, the way only a  _husband_ ever should. You pretend you haven’t  _already_ seen her in ways only meant for the one she marries. You pretend, you pretend she doesn’t love you, and you don’t love her too.  _Blessed are thou, amongst sinners._ Until the thunder cracks, and you shriek, jumping up from where you lie.

“Santana!” Brittany bolts upright. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m fine.” You clutch your heart, pounding, pounding in sheer terror against your ribs. The wind howls. The ocean roars. The rain pounds down. But nothing, nothing quite reaches the volume of your heartbeat when she closes the distance between you, and she presses her warm hands to your shoulders, a fruitless effort to calm you. “It’s just thunder. Just thunder.”

“Santana. Your heart’s racing.”

“I’m fine.” You manage to get out, though the level of  _fine_ you are lowers by the second, directly inversely proportional to her proximity to you.

Your eyes squeeze shut, but when you open them, hers are still level with yours. When you open them, her warm breath is still on your face. When you open them, the urge to kiss her, kiss her like you haven’t in over a week, it still rushes through you. You try to fight it, because kissing her now, it’s different. Kissing her now, you’re certain will reveal your every feeling. But you fail. You fail miserably, as your lips find hers. Like coming home. Like a port in the storm, both literally and metaphorically. You swallow her gasp, when you open your mouth, bringing your hand to her face, begging her to reciprocate. And you gasp yourself, when she does, when she lifts you by your waist, pulling you up, so you’re straddling her thighs. You kiss her, you kiss her, like you’re dying of thirst, and she’s the water you’ve been hunting for days. She kisses you back, hungry, for all that you are.  _Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death._

You’re compelled, by desire, from some other force, you don’t know which, and you can’t even bring yourself to care, all the words to the prayers you’ve been repeating internally quickly forgotten, with a singular glance from Brittany. And you press her back, into the nest of blankets she’d made for you. Her eyes, the brightest thing in the darkness, they’re trained on you, as your trembling fingers seek the buttons of her top, as you undo each one, and then, then you push the garment down her arms, leaving her bare beneath you. You’ve never seen her like this, every touch you’ve ever given her, it’s been buried beneath clothes. But now, she’s naked before you, and you’re breathless. You can’t hear the storm rage on outside, you, you can’t hear anything at all. Not with Brittany. Brittany everywhere. Crawling under your skin. Oozing through your veins and into your heart. Burning into your optic nerves. Filling your lungs and your capillaries with every single breath you take of her soap, her saltwater skin, her utter  _Brittanyness_. You need her. There’s nothing within you that has ever possessed that type of strength, and you bring your lips to hers, succumbing, entirely to the inferno that blazes within you.

Brittany brings her hands back to your face, and she gets back on her knees. She studies you, like you’re a skittish fawn on the beach- and perhaps you are, truly- before she undresses you. The sensation, bare skin on bare skin, her nipples, sending electric shocks through your body when they touch yours, her wetness on your thigh, as she kisses you again, again, it’s unmatched. It makes your previous intimacies positively cold, comparatively. And you submit, fully, to your desire for more. You submit, fully, to her want too, all rational thought tossed to the whipping wind, never to be heard of again, as you map her bare skin with your fingertips, as you bury them inside of her, feeling her animalistic moan at your touch vibrates through you.  

“I love you.” You murmur into her neck, not ceasing your ministrations to her naked sex.

You don’t know if she can even hear you, her body, rocking up into you, her things, trembling, trembling. But you say it anyway. You free the emotions trapped inside. You forget, forget the things that have always been taught to you. Or rather, you choose to let them go, you toss more than your caution out into the blowing stormwinds, things that had long been more a part of you, almost, than your own skin. You toss them away, sending them, perhaps, to some far off Oz, a place of arbitrary rules. Somewhere far away from you, and from Brittany, the girl you love, against all logic, against all reason, against all sense of propriety. And with her body, damp, warm against yours, her lips, pressed to your neck, you slip into another skin, a  _new_ skin, one that feels more comfortable than your old one ever was.

“I love you too.” You say it again, later, later, when you head falls, spent, against the downy pillow. You’re answering what she’d said eight days ago, now that you know she’s focused on you. You’re telling her what she’d promised you didn’t need to say. Her face, it contorts a little above you, at your words, like she’s welling up inside, and she doesn’t know how to manage it. The way you feel, every moment you’re near her. The way you’d fought so hard _not_ to, and now, mere hours later, you can’t imagine any other way. “I love you, and it scares me.”

“I know.” She lowers her head just a little, kidding the corner of your mouth, just as something cracking outside of the house jars you. Your eyes widen and your body tenses, but she takes you in her arms, her strong embrace sheltering you from the storm. Both storms, the one outside the door, and the one inside your head, they’re quieter, quieter as she holds you close. They’re quieter, even as you feel her nerves ripple through her, with the distraction gone. “Sleep now, pretty lady. You’re safe here, I love you, and I gotcha, and nothing’s gonna happen.”


	5. I Know I'll Feel Loneliness No More

The storm passes. You’d dressed  _after,_ in case, but you’d clung, the whole night, to Brittany. You’d clung to her, as you’d heard the windows rattle on the other side of the boards. You’d clung to her, as the house, it seemed to shake with every whip of wind, every slash of rain. But it passes, and in the morning, you emerge from her tucked away home. You walk with her, as she surveys the damage around. She holds your hand, when she can. She helps you over fallen pine boughs, over shutters from who knows where, over puddles from rain, from ocean, from swollen bay. You watch, as brow furrowed, she checks over her boat. It’s safe, safe from damage. You help her, gathering up strewn furniture, improperly tied, by people less prepared than your Brittany.  _Your Brittany._ Because she is now, after the night before. She’s yours, heart, body, soul.

Once the outside of her home, it’s cleaned up a little, you know where you have to go. _Your_ home. The bar. The marina. Brittany, she’s nervous about it, you can tell. She knows, like you do, what’ll happen, if it’s damaged beyond repair. She knows, this new life you’ve decided on, it can be gone, in an instant. That thought, it makes your stomach feel like stones. It makes your heart, race, race, race, until you feel Brittany’s hands on your shoulders, in the thicket of low brush, pulling you, close, close, until her breath tickles your face, and you have to freeze, just to breathe all of her in.

“I love you.” She breathes, the soft wisps of seabreeze in the aftermath of the storm almost carrying her words away. It’s the first time she’s said it to you in the daylight. It’s the first time that you don’t hear the  _Hail Mary’s_ in your head drowning it out.

“I love you too.” You watch, as her face, it shows this sort of wonderment. Saying it in public, or, at least outside, it’s different than speaking it beneath the blankets. Still though, you feel it. You feel it so deeply that it seeps into your bones. Brittany Pierce, your starry eyed fishergirl, she’s something else entirely. She’s something so deserving of all your love. “We need to go and see if it’s still there.”

“The storm was bad, but not near ’s bad ’s thirty-eight. We’ll take care of whatever needs to be taken care of, alright? Together.” Hidden away, she presses her palm to your face, and she kisses you, gently, gently, her eyelids fluttering against yours. “Don’t worry your pretty head.”

“Okay.” You concede. The idea of  _together_ , it thrills you. It thrills you in a way that you know it shouldn’t, but, it’s Brittany, and really, you can’t take your time thinking about all the  _shouldn'ts._

She keeps a small distance between the two of you, as you step over branches and broken boards along the walkway. Your hand, it feels cold, strange, when it’s not in hers, but you know it can’t be, and instead, you hold her closer with your heart. When you reach the bay, you gasp, taken aback by what’s in front of you. The water, it’s risen, higher than you’ve ever seen, spilling up over the edge of the dock. The harbor, it’s empty, everyone’s boats somewhere in dry land, hopefully in shape as good as Brittany’s. And people, there are people everywhere, in a way you hadn’t expected. Greeting each other, checking on each other, already clearing away the branches and debris that litter what is essentially your front yard. It’s a community, in the way you’d only sort of experienced in church on Sunday mornings. A community, where everyone who can is ready and willing to help each other. Briefly, you make eye contact with Brittany, before you approach the bar, and when you see it, door ajar, you swallow hard.

“Miss Lopez.” Mr. Edja steps through, looking as if he’s catching his breath, seeing you there. “You’re alright.”

“I am, sir.” You nod, hands smoothing your skirt nervously as you meet his eyes. “Brittany was kind enough to invite me into her home last night.”

“On the water is no place for anyone, let alone a newcomer.” Brittany steps to your defense, in case you’re in trouble for leaving the bar unattended.

“Of course, of course.” He straightens his crooked tie. “My apologies for not knowing the weather before I left you here. I’m glad you had a friend who knew better than I did.”

“So’m I.” You look at Brittany, out of the corner of your eye. Her distrust of outsiders, it’s apparent, when she takes in your boss. He’s from the city, just like you are, but his visits, they’re few and far between. He takes the money of the islanders with no problem, but he’s not one of them, and leaving a girl in a storm, leaving  _her_ girl in a storm (you shiver, the good kind, at that possessive preposition), that’s not the way of the people here. “Made sure she was real safe, my house is smack in the middle of the island, furthest distance from both the ocean'n the bay. Pop’s runnin’ the ferry already then?”

“Captain Pierce’s girl?” He eyes her, much as she eyes him, two people, from different worlds, and you in the middle.

“Right, sir.” She wipes a hand on her trousers and then extends it to him. “Brittany, Brittany Pierce.”

“Lawrence Edja. Your father says you frequent my bar, you and your crew. Impressive feat for a woman, handling a boat full of fishermen.”

 _Impressive feat for anyone,_ you think, though you bite your tongue. This man, he was kind enough to give you a job, he’s a friend of your father’s, and you won’t make an embarrassment of yourself, or risk losing your employment, as much as you want to speak out against his obvious disbelief that Brittany is capable of all she does.

“How’s the building, Mr. Edja?” You speak instead, your fingers twitching, that longing for Brittany’s hand in yours not fading.

“Lucky, it seems. A few missing shingles, and a broken window, but it seems structurally sound.”

“Ya checked the roof, then?” She asks him, and you picture her, as she was earlier, trousers and shirt sleeves rolled as she claimed a ladder to check her own.

“I’ve got a fella coming to do it tomorrow, looks good from here.”

“Ain’t safe, ‘specially if Santana’ll be sleeping beneath it. Let me climb up and check it out for myself. If it’s wrecked, I know a guy that’ll fix it up for you quick.”

“You fix roofs too?” Mr. Edja raises a suspicious brow, but Brittany shakes her head.

“I know if they’re gonna fall down or not, but I don’t do the fixing. Leave that t'Mr. Chang, finest carpenter on the island.”

“Chang? Is that—” He begins, but Brittany’s glare cuts him off.

“He’s an American citizen, and his pop’s from  _China,_ not Japan, for that matter. Already been here two generations. Ain’t his war my brother died for,  _sir._ He’s got a boy over there too, fighting on our side, and one who works for me, taking on his own war effort on the Homefront ‘til his number comes up,  _sir_.”

You hear the sarcasm in that final word, but you don’t blame her for it a bit. They may not have rounded them up in camps out on this coast, but you see it in the streets of your own city back home, men, women, children of any type of Oriental ancestry, being spit on, having obscenities spewed at them, ever since the day after Hawaii was bombed, and your country had gotten tangled up in this unending war. Mr. Edja doesn’t speak another word, perhaps because Brittany’s a woman, since you’d seen him put boys in their place and make them quake in their boots back when your father was home. He just nods at her request to check the roof, to check that  _you’re safe,_ you feel your heart catch in your throat at the thought of that, and you force yourself to tear your eyes from her lithe frame as she climbs the metal rungs attached to the building. Knowing you’ll give yourself away, you retreat into the bar. You mop water from the floor, you check, finding that no glasses have been broken, and you sink against the bar, relief finally coming, and making your whole body shudder. The building is still standing, it hits you then. Your livelihood, the place that lets you stay here, here with Brittany, the storm didn’t take it out to sea.

Time moves slowly, as Brittany works above you. She’s got other things to do, you know. She’s got to check on the Changs, the Karofsky’s, the Abrams’, who’s son is the only one on Brittany’s crew who’s yet been drafted, and now that the storm’s passed, she needs to get her boat back in the water and ready to be out there, fishing, as it’s intended. But she’s put you first, above all that, and for the first time, like in all the books you’ve read, you truly understand what it means to swoon. Your fingers, habitually, play with the thin gold cross around your neck, but you forget the verses about sinners and repentance that your _abuelita_ so favors. You forget about them, and instead, as your good hearted, beautiful fisher girl taps at shingles above you, you think the good ones, you think  _love is patient and kind,_ you think  _there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment._

You hear her and Mr. Edja speaking outside, when she comes down. The roof is fine, everything’s fine, and when he offers her a whiskey on the house for her kindness, you hear the slight hesitation in her voice, before she declines, and tells him she ought to get on, but peeks quickly inside to wave a quick goodbye to you. The day drags, really, as you sweep the floors and wash the windows, as Mr. Edja washes sand away from the dock and returns the wooden chairs to the deck in the back, before checking that you’re alright one final time, and returning on the six o’clock ferry. You don’t open the bar that night, you know there’s no point, really, everyone’s recovering and repairing, but Spencer and Mason, the bar boys, come in to help you with inventory, and to get ready for the next day. Around eight, you send them home, and you realize, beyond the soft-boiled eggs and toast Brittany offered you early this morning, you haven’t eaten.

Heading up to your apartment for the first time, you’re glad to see it’s all intact, and you set about making yourself a little dinner. You’ve just about got the water up for dried pasta, when the tinkle of the doorbell you’re not sure has ever been rung jars you. Unwilling to leave the stove unattended, you turn off the gas, and you smooth down your hair, hurrying down the stairs to answer the door. When you do, there’s Brittany, dirt streaked across her face, pants ripped, and a big grin on her mouth.

“Evenin’, pretty lady.”

“Hi.” Your breath catches at the sight of her. You can’t explain it, this being in love thing, but your heart hammers and your hands sweat a little. “You want to come in?”

“I was hopin’ so, but I don’t want to interrupt, if you’re busy.”

“Not at all.” You smile at her, you wonder if she sees the moons in your eyes. “I was just making some dinner, nothing fancy, but there’ll be plenty, if you’d like some pasta.”

“I was gonna see if I could pull some scallops up from the bay, if ya wanted to join me. But tryin’ your food? That sounds even better.”

As you lead her upstairs, you realize that she’s never been inside your apartment, and though you keep it tidy, you suddenly find yourself getting self-conscious about the place. Brittany, luckily, doesn’t seem to notice. She compliments the place, before taking you up on your offer to wash up in the bathroom, and then siting herself right down at your little table, making herself so much at home that your heart, it sings inside of your chest. She watches you, as you open jars of cannellini beans and stewed tomatoes, canned from the Victory Garden on the rooftop at home, as you quickly and carefully chop an onion, as you stir it all in a saucepan, channelling, as best you can, Mrs. Rosetti, from the apartment next door to you in the city. You’re just about done, the pasta near boiled, and the aroma of tomatoes filling the whole apartment, when you feel a presence standing behind you, a hand on your hip, and you inhale as much air as you can, because Brittany in your space, it makes you dizzy, Brittany in your space, especially while you’re doing something so… _domestic,_ it intensifies this deep longing for thing things you’re not quite sure you’ll ever be allowed to have together.

“Smells like ya cook as good as your Mama.”

“When have you—“ You begin, then you stop, remembering the meal you shared the night before, sitting at her table in her little house in the middle of the island, and your cheeks heat. “Oh, of course.”

“Am I so forgettable?” She teases you a bit, and you feel her front press into your back, her lips graze your hairline. It shakes you, the way she touches you, body and soul. It shakes you, how much you want her, not just physically, but, like this, in your kitchen, as you hold a wooden spoon in your hand, with her long blonde hair let down, so it falls just above the swell of her bottom.

“No.” Your voice is more raspy even than normal in your dry throat, her lips serving as quite a distraction. “You’re not. You’ll never be.”

“Good, I’m glad for that.” The vibrations of her speech thrum through your body, and after stirring the mixture in the pan once more, you cock your head to the side, finding her lips, kissing her, kissing her, deep, deep, the way you haven’t been able to since naked beneath the blanket the night before. Her fingers tickle your side, your free hand, it tangles in her hair, and when she finally pulls her head back, you’re weak in the knees. “Thanks for lettin’ me up here, and for sharin’ your food with me tonight, Santana. Haven’t eaten since breakfast this mornin’, it’s been a day for sure.”

“I haven’t either, truth be told, I forgot about food. But I’m glad that you came when you did, I’m glad I could do this tonight, and…take care of you, like you’ve been taking care of me.”

“What do you mean?” Brittany’s brow furrows in question. “I haven’t done all that much of anything.”

“Letting me stay with you, checking the roof today…I just appreciate all that a lot, Brittany.”

“That was nothin’.” She shrugs it off quickly, and you close your eyes, thinking of how she does that when her hands are in her pockets, instead of around your waist, and love it as you do the other way, you’re sure you like it more as she is now. “And besides, my motives weren’t all selfless with that. Keepin’ you here is awfully important to me.”

“As long as I can manage it, I’m sticking around.” You try to sound nonchalant, but your words, they feel weighty, your words, they almost beg her. Where just a day-and-a-half ago, you’d struggled with the decision to return to this desolate island, now, leaving scarcely seems like an option at all. You’re rooted here, not so much to the bar, but to  _her,_ her presence, stronger, even, than the call to the ocean that you’d only read about in storybooks. “And as much as I can manage, I’d like to take care of you, selfishly, or unselfishly, doesn’t matter much to me.”

“I think, love, that maybe we oughta take care of each other. You’ve been helpin’ with all them babies your whole life, and I’ve been takin’ care of Pop and my brother, since nearly before I could walk. So, if we share the taking care…”

“I think, I think I’d like that quite a lot.”

You press her lips, just gently to Brittany’s, before you have to disentangle herself to drain the pasta, thinking, thinking hard, of helpmeets and things you’d never, not in you wildest dreams, imagined could be another woman. But here you are, with Brittany, cooking dinner, and feeling, more than ever, like this is the way you could live out your days. Not with the boy downstairs that your mother thinks could be a good match for you. Not with the son of the nurse at the hospital that your father wants you to court. Not in an apartment on the Bowery, with a mess of kids, like your Mama. But here, here in this place, on this island between the Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Here, where you hear waves and crickets at night, and where this girl, this gorgeous girl, this girl who smells like saltwater and sunshine kisses you in the kitchen, and holds your hand beneath the stars. It’s all you shouldn’t want, and it’s all you ever have.


	6. This Blessed Assurance Holding Me

As September grows later, you find the air growing chiller than it ever had so early back home. In the evenings, you can’t go out without a sweater, and you know that your nights of walking down to the beach and laying in the sand with Brittany are coming to a close. As it is now, on the nights where she’s not too tired, you’re already buttoning up your sweater, already pulling on your warmer stockings, already preparing to fight against long months of wind and cold. Most nights now though, she _is_ too tired to do much of anything.

It’s striped bass season, she tells you. You’re not entirely sure what that means, but when you look from behind the bar at the crews coming in, you see barrels of far bigger fish than they’d hauled in the warmer months. You see even the biggest men come in, bone weary and scarcely able to finish a single dark glass of bourbon, when just a month earlier, they’d knocked back three of four with ease.

On those nights, the nights where Brittany’s bones hurt, she’ll knock sometimes on the door to your apartment, stinking to the high heavens, and sometimes with a gash on her face, or lacerations on her hands. You don’t like that much at all. She’s used to it, she tells you, but that doesn’t make it better. _Season’s almost over, doll_ , she’ll promise, as you set bowls of hot fish soup and thick slices of brown bread on the table. You can’t wait for it, truly, though…it nags you, what the days will be like when she doesn’t come off her boat. It nags you, what she’s become to you, and how it can possibly continue come shut up winter.

Mr. Chang fixes your roof. It was mostly sound, Brittany had promised, but she wouldn’t let Mr. Edja skimp on the repairs, not with you sleeping beneath it. You swoon inside, every time you hear Mr. Chang banging around above you. In all your fighting in your head about propriety, one thing is for certain, Brittany, lady or not, is the hero of your story. Brittany is your true love’s kiss. She’s the one who wakes you from a thousand years’ slumber. Your lady knight in shining armor.

There’s commotion at the marina one morning at the cusp of October, when Captain Pierce brings the mail in. Tossing the rag you’d been wiping down the bar with into the bin, you move slowly to the door. Despite Brittany, despite the friendly smiles and words of kindness dropped when you’re pouring gin and making small talk, you’re still an outsider here, so you tread carefully. You never want to appear to interested with the goings on outside. But the wailing woman catches your ear, and it would be against your very conscience not to check if there’s some sort of thing you can do. The wailing woman makes your heart sink, because in these times, you’ve come to fear the very worst, especially when the mail comes in.

“Miss Lopez.” Captain Pierce calls out your name when you slip through the open door, and you jolt, not expecting to be noticed so quickly. “A stiff brandy please.”

“Yes. Yes, sir.” You nod, voice catching, as his commanding presence always makes you nervous. Not because he’s unkind, but, because _Brittany_.

You’re hasty in your work, pulling a clean glass from the crate, and filling it only halfway with ice, before tipping the amber liquid inside. You’re certain the Captain asked for it to calm the woman’s nerves, and with the way she clutched the letter in her hands, you think she needs it more than you hope to ever know. Much to your surprise, your hands shake as you carry the glass out to the docks. You’re thinking of your father, brass buttons on his uniform shining under electric street lights. You’re thinking too, of the boy in the pictures in Brittany’s house, and the folded flag that sits on the living room table. You see them in the woman’s face, and your heart, it aches.

“Nancy, drink this.” Captain Pierce takes the glass from your hand, and presses it into the crying woman’s. “It’ll calm them jitters.”

“Shot in the back!” She wails. “Shot in the back! He’ll never walk again!”

“Hey now!” He booms, though there’s still a sort of softness in his voice. “Consider yerself lucky, and him lucky too. He’s comin’ home, and he ain’t in a bag.”

“May well be! He’s a fisherman, Nat! How’ll he adapt to all this? What’s your girl gon’ do, wheel him onto her boat? Tug him along behind on a line?”

At the callousness of the woman’s words, you have to suppress the gasp that rises up inside of you. You’d assumed her son for dead, of course, but he’s not, thanks be to God, and here this woman is, saying he’s better off that way. The look that crosses the Captain’s face gives you pains, low in your belly, and you think of Brittany. You think of the dark sadness that crosses her face when she talks about her fallen brother. You think—

“Enough, Nancy!” Captain Pierce snaps. “Enougha all that nonsense! Ya think I’d'nt give everything to have m'boy back, chair or not? To have Mary back? He’s comin’ home, and ya oughta get all this outta ya now!”

“Alright, Cap. Let'er be.” One of the older gentlemen steps up to him, and you watch Brittany’s father fall back. You watch him pull a pack of Lucky Strikes from his breast pocket. And then you avert your eyes, you back away slowly, because you realize that you shouldn’t be watching at all.

“Miss Lopez.” He startles you again, and you turn your attention from the bay and back to him. “Ya got the bar open.”

“Yes, sir.” You smooth your skirt, feeling like a child in Sunday school, reprimanded for daydreaming about far off lands and knights slaying dragons. “I’ll head back in then.”

“Good then. I could use a brandy myself.”

Your hands shake harder as you walk back inside. The bar is empty, save for Brittany’s father, and in the months you’ve spent on this island, you’ve never been alone in his presence. He’s older than you’d thought, you realize, watching him take off his hat, his hair more salt than pepper, and his eyes, that same blue you know so well, they’re tired, dull. He watches you as your pour his brandy, neat, always, and you use every ounce of will inside of you to keep from spilling it all over the bar, all over his deep navy uniform.

“I reckon she don’t know better.” He speaks, and you’re not sure whether he’s speaking to you, or just himself. “She never lost no one before. Her Ma and Pa still live up in her house. Her husband still works the docks. She don’t know how much more no boy at all hurts more than a boy in a chair. And don’t she know that the president of this whole fine country’s got himself in a chair? If he can do that, sure ‘nough the boy can find a way to make use of himself.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” You say it softly, unsure, and he looks up from where he swirls his drink in the glass. It’s something you’ve learned, in your months here, that mostly, people don’t come into a bar for a drink. Mostly they come for companionship, and mostly, when they talk to you, they’re just looking for someone who will listen.

“Ya know my girl, right? She friendly with ya? Make sure ya don’t find yerself in trouble?”

“I—” Your words get stuck in your throat. Speaking of Brittany out loud, to her father, no less, it sends vibrations through your body. Your abuelita’s words resonate in your mind again, except…except you’re not speaking of the sin. You’re just speaking of her. Of the girl you love. Of your very dearest friend. “Yes, Brittany’s been most kind to me.”

“Alright then. I told her to do’s much. Told Larry he’s a fool too, hirin’ a girl out here. City girl 'specially, with this rowdy crew. No offense meant. But ya got a handle on it, and sounds like my girl’s got a handle on makin’ sure no one bothers ya.”

“I’ve found nothing but kindness here. It’s much appreciated.”

The man just nods, and you take his silence as an invitation to step back and leave him be, as he nurses the drink in front of him. You feel flushed as you go to task unpacking clean glasses, and you find yourself fingering the cross beneath your collar. You can’t help but try to listen, in the silence, to Brittany’s father’s thoughts. What would he think if he knew? Would he look upon you not with a sort of fondness, but disgust? And what about the others? Would people treat you as kindly as they have? You know it’s not the place Brittany took you, where you were too scared to love her fully in the daylight, but, could you lay in bed with her at night, knowing that others knew how you loved, and still feel unafraid?

You shake your thoughts away as quickly as they come. It’s foolish to dream such impossible things. Instead you think of your stolen kisses. You think of Brittany, stripped to her undergarments, nodding off in your big arm chair as you read Brontë aloud. Of her lingering in your apartment until she can’t possibly stay another minute. Of her pressing her lips to yours after you tell her to stay safe in the morning. Of you watching in the evenings for her boat to come in, pretending to check something out on the porch, just so that you can catch a glimpse of her. Of the stars in her eyes that make everything so worth it.

Captain Pierce gets lost in the afternoon flurry, and you’re so busy giving Spencer directions for the evening that you don’t notice him slip out. You place his glass into the bucket of dirties when you notice that he’s gone, and you scarcely spare your morning a thought, until you hear the horns of the first boats coming in. Those who sit at your bar during the day, they’re old timers, mostly, men who’ve done their years out at sea. Their faces are weathered from sun and wind, but they’re quiet, mostly, finding their companionship in hushed conversation, and in the static radio that plays the news from Europe and Asia.  
But that all changes when the boats come in. Even exhausted, the crews bring raucousness with them. Shouting, cussing, knocking hats off one another’s heads in greeting, and most of all, bragging about their hauls for the day. Noisy as it is though, you always know when Brittany comes in. Something about the air changes. You’d always called it silly, when you’d read lines like that in your books, but it’s true, and tonight, a wide grin splits her face as she pulls off her cap, revealing the crown of braids she keeps tucked beneath it.

“Evenin’, Miss Santana.” She steps up to the bar, resting her elbow on it. “How ya doin’?”

“Very well.” Your face feels hot, and your skin flushes. The effect she has on you, it’s too much. “How about you? Today’s catch any good?”

“Pennies from Heaven today. Best season I’ve seen in my life. Drinks’re on me tonight, for my whole crew.” Her teeth show as she slides a five dollar bill across the counter. “And you too, if you’ll join me for a whiskey sour. We’ve got a lot to celebrate!”

“I wish I could, but…” You wave your arm in the direction of the crowded room. She knows you can’t, but still, she offers to buy you a drink every night, for politeness’ sake. “I’ll have a Schlitz once I close up here.”

“Well alright then. Can’t argue with a lady doin’ her job. We’ll have the usual.”

It’s a Thursday, so the bar quiets down early, everyone exhausted for the week. You’re glad for it, truly, and when you send Mason on his way, you lock the door behind you, and peer around for Brittany. She’s waiting, of course, by the stairs that lead up to your apartment, and she doesn’t say a word as she follows you up. Before you even have the door closed though, she’s pulling a folded paper from her pocket, and her big grin from the bar, it’s back.

“Art’s comin’ home! Ya see this?” She holds the letter up to you, water stained and wrinkled. “No more worryin’ about him over there! I’ve been waitin’ all night to show ya!”

“It was big news out on the dock this morning.” You tell her, cautiously, not sure you should tell her what had happened. “I wasn’t sure it was your friend…”

“It is! I mean, he’s hurt pretty bad, and he can’t walk, sounds like, but he’ll be back here! Oh, Santana, I can’t wait for ya t’ meet him!”

“I forgot you write each other all the time…” You trail off, a strange sort of something bubbling up in your stomach, and making you taste a sourness at the back of your throat. You don’t like it, you don’t like feeling like that at all, and yet, you do. “I’m glad you’re so excited.”

“What'sa matter, doll? Ya look like ya seen a ghost or somethin’.”

“Nothing’s the matter.” With a quick shake of the head, you try to recover your wits. “Just wondering if you’re hungry. I was going to make a chicken. Mr. Cooper brought it over for me this morning.”

"Sure! Chicken sounds swell!” There’s still a questioning look on her face, but you turn away from her, you busy yourself, lest you explode.

You’re quiet as you cook. You’re quiet as you eat. But inside, your mind roars, inside, you’re stomach squirms and wriggles. You can’t put your finger on it completely, but you think this must be what jealously feels like. This is different, this Arthur thing. You know the other boys she spends time with. You know that David seems to be interested more in other boys than he would be in Brittany. You know Michael’s parents are looking for a Chinese bride for him. But Arthur…

He’s a war hero. He’ll come back in his uniform, with ribbons and medals pinned on him, perhaps. He’s been at Normandy, with Brittany’s brother. He’d been all over Europe, fighting the Nazis, the fascists. He’d made a great sacrifice for the this great country, and, well, you’re just _you_ , and it shakes you to the core to think that maybe this could be the man that Brittany marries. Maybe when he comes back, this _thing_ between you two will be pushed aside for her inevitable future.

“Is somethin’ upsettin’ you?” She asks you after dinner. You haven’t made to pick up your book, you haven’t uttered more than a few words, but you shake your head. “I’m not sure I believe ya.”

“I’m just fine, Brittany.” You put down your beer, and you fiddle with the dials on the radio, turning to NBC for _The Alan Young Show_ to fill in the silence. “Your program is on.”

“Don’t care much for listenin’ tonight. I don’t like when ya make like a clam and shut yourself all up like this. Scares me, like you’re gonna go on and run away again.”

“I’m not running anywhere. I made a commitment to Mr. Edja.”

“Ya know what I’m talkin’ about. Avoidin’ me and all that. You’re hardly talkin’ tonight, and ya got somethin’ in your head.”

“I’ve just been thinking about you settling down, alright?” You blurt out, your stomach twisting and aching as you say it. “About Arthur coming home, and you marrying him.”

“Me, marryin’ Art?” Her eyebrows fly up in surprise, and then, much to your ire, she starts laughing. “That’s crazy talkin’. Why would I marry Art?”

“Because he’s a war hero. Because you write him letters, and now he’s coming home, and maybe he wants to do like all the other boys do and go on and get married.”

“They go on and get married to chicks they’re sweet on! They don’t just pick 'em all willy nilly.” Brittany stops her laughing, seeing the frustration on your face, and she stands to look at you fully. “Ya really think I wanna marry him?”

“I don’t know what you want.” You whisper. “I don’t know if it’s going to change things when he comes home, and that’s so terrible of me to be worrying all about myself when he’s coming home alive.”

“Santana, Santana. Ya get your head all filled up with stuff I don’t even understand. Course I love Art, he’s been my friend since forever, but I love him like Davey, or my brother, or my Pop. I love only one person the kind of love that ya go marryin’, and she’s sittin’ right here talkin’ crazy.”

“But—”

“But nothin’. You’re my sweetheart, not Art. Don’t go gettin’ all scared about him comin’ home, 'cuz I don’t change nothin’ for us, except you fin'lly get to meet him. I’ll still be here with ya every night, and’ll still wanna kiss you all the time.”

With a sigh, you sink back into your chair, but before you can wallow, she’s standing over you, hands on your knees, fingers fiddling with the pleats of your skirt. You look into her eyes, and you see it all there. You see it, and then when she leans down to kiss you, you feel it in her lips on yours, soft and sure, full of love that swells out from her chest. Wanting her closer, you tilt your chin up, and you set your arm on her lower back, kissing, kissing, until you feel dizzy.

“You’re my sweetheart too.” You admit, a whisper against her lips.

“No boys I oughta get jealous over? I dunno, I think maybe Chip was starin’ at ya tonight.” Brittany teases, twirling a lock of your hair between her fingers.

“Maybe he’s got a ring for ya in his trouser pocket.”

“Chip’s smitten with Mary Ann Overton and you know it.” You laugh, a real laugh, a relieved laugh. “Are you going to tease me about this forever?”

“Not forever, but at least for tonight. Ya gotta stop gettin’ caught in your head. Just tell me when you’re all twisted, so I can tell ya if it’s silly or not. But if it’s all about whether I wanna be with someone else, the answer is never. It’s always gonna be you I love, my pretty city sweetheart.”


	7. As Long As You Were With Me, Let the Cold Wind Blow

It gets cold quickly. It’s the kind of cold that you’re not sure how to handle. At night, when you’re alone in your bed, and the wind pelts against the thin glass, you’re sure that the whole building will come down. The bay roars and surges, and you’re sure that you’ll get swept out to sea. At night, when you’re alone in bed, you dream of the warm fire in your parents’ apartment in the city. You dream of wrapping an afghan around you and one of your little sisters, and forgetting the cold exists. You dream of your toes not aching, and the cloud of grey around the island not swallowing you up. You love Brittany, but you hate the nights you have to sleep alone. You love Brittany, but the cold is lonely.

She stays over as often as she can. She works long days in the shipyard now, her strong hands sanding wood, building boats, getting ready for spring. The shipyard is across the water, you can see it from your window on clear days, swaddled in grey. You can see it, and you wait, you wait, for the last ferry to come in, for her to come back to you. Brittany’s boat is tucked safely in the wooden shed behind her house for the winter, so she takes the ferry. When Captain Pierce pulls in for the last time, you see her sitting beside him, warm cap covering her ears, a bright blue scarf you’d knit for her wrapped snugly around her neck. That’s the warmest you feel all day, that first moment you see her, all grins and blue eyes.

Arthur Abrams comes home. Brittany, and David, and Michael throw him a party in the bar. You’re working, of course, but you put on your best red dress, a new pair of stockings, and you wear lipstick. You haven’t felt this dressed up in a long time, and the way Brittany looks at you across the room, you know that she notices. You know that she notices, and you feel that same warmth from the evenings, low in your belly.

“Let’s go, Art!” She cheers, wheeling his high backed chair toward you. “‘Bout time ya meet our very own Miss Lopez.”

“Holy mackerel! This broad’s a looker!” He winks at you, and your skin turns hot, eyes watering. “How’s about ya turn around, Miss? I think I need another drink, one'a them whiskeys from the high shelf.”

“Oh, I—” You stammer. You consider saying something rude, something you’d confess to God as you kneel at the foot of your bed later on, but you think better of t. Arthur is a hero. Arthur took a bullet in the back for your country. He deserves your respect, and so, you turn around.

You’re on your toes, reaching for the good whiskey, up on top, and fighting the urge to cover your backside, when you hear a soft thwack and an ow, whatcha do that for? You bite back a smile, because you know exactly what it was, and you know precisely what it was done for. Brittany, your Brittany, making sure you’re treated with respect.

“Ya oughta apologize to her. She’s'nt here for ya to be starin’ at like that.”

“Sheesh, Pierce, a guy’s been in the trenches in Germany, ain’t been a long time since I’ve seen a fine specimen of woman like that.”

“Quit bein’ a fool, Art, or I’ll wheel ya right into the bay.”

“It’s alright.” You tell her softly, turning around. You know she’s joking with him, you know that that’s how they all talk to each other, but still, you don’t like it much. “No harm done.”

“See.” He shrugs, eying you again. “Don’t bother her.”

“I’ll give ya a knuckle sandwich if ya don’t apologize.” She warns. “Us women don’t like bein’ treated like that.”

“Us women?” He mocks Brittany a little, and you’re not sure whether or not he’s teasing still. “Since when’re ya callin’ yourself a woman?”

“Since I was born one, ya numbskull. Stop makin’ a scene.”

“Why do ya c—” Arthur stops his sentence short, and you shiver, knowing that he’s realized, but not knowing the way he’ll react. “Sorry 'bout that, Pierce. I didn’t know.”

“Ain’t me ya need to apologize to.” She takes the glass you set down on the bar for him, winking, as she drinks it herself, to promise you that it’s okay.

“My apologies, Miss Lopez.” He makes a show of taking his cap off and leaning forward in his chair, a bow, of sorts, before extending his hand. “Arthur Abrams, Pierce’s oldest friend, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you for your service.” You squeeze his hand, reassured by Brittany’s presence. “I’ve heard so much about you, so I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance.”

After you pour another drink for Arthur, and Brittany’s fingers brush the back of your hand as she sets her glass down on the bar, and they go back over to their table. Down deep, you want so badly to ask him what it’s like over there. You want to ask him if, by some miracle, he’s met your father. You want to know everything that his letters to you don’t tell. You want, really, truly, for some sort of divine intervention to tell you that your father, the good doctor, the good man is going to be okay.

But you don’t. You don’t know him, and shouldn’t he be made uncomfortable by your questions, you’d feel terrible if that were to happen. So instead, you clear the empty tables around them. You listen to him tell his war stories, and you wonder how much is reality, and how much he’s embellished for his friends. You listen, and you wonder what kind of demons haunt him when he’s alone, you wonder how much of the pain from his bullet wound that he hides, when he’s not filled with whiskey and bravado.

He enjoys the little party, you think, and they stay until you’re just about ready to close the bar. It’s David, finally, who offers to wheel him on home, and they both lift their hats in your direction once their coats are on, and they’re headed out the door. Brittany, for her part, starts ushering everyone else out. She grins at you as she does, and you have to look down, that wide grin proving just a bit too much for you to handle after the single drink you’d had about an hour ago. Finally, it’s just the two of you. She turns the sign on the door, then the lock, before she struts to the bar, hopping up on a stool, and putting her elbows up.

“What what can I help ya with?”

“I’m nearly finished.” You turn to straighten the bottles behind you. “Are you going home now?”

“I was hopin’ not. You look awful pretty in that dress.”

“Brittany.” Her name comes out more like a kitten purr, and though you didn’t mean it that way, it seems to have an affect on her.

“I like kissin’ ya with your lipstick on too.” She whispers, making you shiver.

“I’ll be ready in just a moment.”

You don’t rush your work, though you wish to. You wipe the clean glasses, and you arrange them neatly. You wipe the counters once more. You sweep the floor. Brittany wants to help, but you don’t let her. She’s worked all day, that hard, physical labor she does. You don’t need her to help you with your job. You just want her to sit. You want her to nurse that last whiskey you poured, taking a single from your tips to pay for it. You want to watch her eyes in the low light, as she watches you from across the room.

As you lock up the door, you’re both quiet. You always are, in the still of the late evening, and you usher her up the back stairs before you. She has a little limp, you notice, though she didn’t seem to earlier. Your brow furrows, but you don’t say anything. If she wants to tell you that there’s something bothering you, she’ll tell you. She doesn’t have to, but you certainly hope she does.

“I’m sorry Art was bein’ like that before…” Brittany taps her fingers on the edge of your table, watching as you take out some leftovers to have for dinner.

“It’s alright. It’s probably part of the reason Mr. Edja ever agreed to hire me in the first place. I know he didn’t mean any harm.” You shake your head a little bit, and put two plates of cold chicken and cheese on the table. “Please don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” She nods. “Do ya mind if I stay tonight?”

“I’d mind more if you didn’t.”

Her eyes crinkle, and you reach across the table, putting your right hand on top of her left. It’s cracked and calloused, both of her hands are, and you want to rub them smooth with your Pacquin’s. They must hurt, you think, but Brittany doesn’t complain. She never does, and as much as you love her, you admire her even more.

“Have ya been sorta sad lately?” She asks out of nowhere, and you look up from tracing the lines on her hand.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just wonderin’. Ya don’t have to tell me if ya don’t feel like it, but if I did somethin’ to make ya feel that way…”

“Oh, no, it’s not you at all.” You shake your head quickly. “It’s the cold, I think, that’s making me feel a little low and homesick.”

“Winters’ll do that to ya.” She looks at you, so much understanding on her face. “Do ya wish to be back in the city?”

“I…” Carefully, you consider your words. You do, and you don’t. You do wish to spend your nights cooking dinner beside your mother. You wish to read stories to the little girls. You wish to have one or two of them crawl into your bed for warmth in the middle of the night. But being back there means being away from Brittany. It means not seeing her, perhaps, ever again. It means having to go back to pretending you’d rather look at Gary Cooper than Ingrid Bergman. It means having to pretend you’d rather go dancing with the son of someone your mother knows than lay nose to nose with Brittany in the sand. Going home means you can’t be you anymore, and it means you can’t be with her. Homesick as you are, that’s something you could never give up. “I miss my family, and I’m a little lonely, but no. I wish to be with you, to be here. You make me so happy.”

“I’m gonna try to keep doing that, so long as ya stay.”

You push up and leans across the table. Brittany’s hair falls loose from her braid, and you weaves your fingers through it, pulling her close to kiss her. When she stands in response, she wraps an arm around your waist, pressing her body into yours, her breasts soft against your own. She lifts you up, and your leg instinctively wraps around her waist. She does this sometimes, carries you to bed. It feels immensely romantic, the sort of thing you’ve never even read in your books—perhaps because it’s the sort of thing that isn’t written down, this passionate part of being in love, at least in books you can get from the library—and the sensation of being in her strong arms makes your stomach bubble and swoop.

Brittany likes to undress you. You’ve learned this, the few times you’ve been amorous with her in your apartment, the few nights you’ve known that you have absolutely privacy. Always, she starts by kissing your lips, then trailing her fingers down the column of your neck. She unbuttons your dress, and when the fabric falls away, her hands map what it leaves exposed. They’re calloused and cracked, but they’re gentle, so gentle as they cup your satin covered breasts, as they graze down your stomach, flattening on either side of your navel. She cherishes you with her hands, it’s something that amazes you. She cherishes you, and you feel that familiar wetness pool between your legs.

“I love you.” She murmurs, her lips on your clavicle while her nimble fingers unfasten the back of your bra. “I’ll never letcha be lonely anymore.”

“Brittany.”

“I’d marry ya if I could, ya know?”

“What?” You startle, eyes widening. She stops kissing you, and she props her head up on her hand, staring.

“I’d marry you. I told ya back when ya had all that stuff about Art, that you’re the only one I loved in the marrying kind of way, and I mean it.I’d buy ya a ring like my brother did. I’d save up my fishin’ money to build us a great big house where you could see the ocean from the window. If find a way to get ya some babies. I’d do all those things for ya, and then you’d never have to be lonely again.”

“Brittany.”

Her name catches in your throat, thick with emotion. Blessed art thou among sinners, pops into your head, and though, you think, it’s wrong, it’s sacrilegious to think such solemn prayers about someone who isn’t the Blessed Mother, about someone who lies over a half naked woman, you can’t help yourself. She is your blessing, she is your dearest thing. Her words don’t scare you because you’ve only know her half a year, her words don’t scare you at all. They make you wish, wish, as hard as you could, on every shooting star, that somehow, some way you could marry her someday. You know it’s impossible—your abuelita scolds even little Carlota in play, girls marry boys, not other girls—but still, still, you wish.

“I’d give ya anything, ya know.”

“I do know.” You nod, your fingers playing with her buckle of her suspenders. “But that’s not something you could give me, as much as you want to. It’s the law, and it’s God.”

“I think it’s awful foolish'a God. Why’s he gotta make us love each other like man and woman, then say I can’t marry you right up?”

“You can’t call God foolish.” You whisper, fingers grasping the crucifix at your throat. You want to tell her not just that she can’t say that, but that God isn’t, but you can’t make yourself. He feels that way lately, even as you sink to your knees and pray every night.

“Well he feels it. I don’t know much about him, 'cause my Pop doesn’t care so much for him, but I still think he’s a fool. He took my mama, and my brother, and he makes a law that I can’t marry my lady.” Tears spring up in her eyes, and you’ve never seen her like this. She’s brave and sure and steady, and you push yourself up, not bothering to cover yourself as you wrap your arms around her. “I don’t want to lose ya, Santana. You’re my very best thing.”

“You won’t lose me.” You promise, kissing her lips over and over again, brushing away her tears. “I love you too much to ever go.”

“What about gettin’ married? Havin’ babies? What about when the war’s done?”

“What’s making you so worried tonight, love?” You pull her hair loose from her braid, you watch it cascade down her back, and you press your hands to her chest.

“I don’t like seein’ ya sad, and I don’t like thinkin’ I’m keepin’ ya from having everything you oughta. All the boys think you’re the prettiest, and ya could have your pick of 'em all. Even one who lives here, and I could come visit you, and Mike, or Art, or Jesse. I’d even bring somethin’ special for your babies, so long as you were happy.”

“Brittany. Tears burn the back of your throat. You don’t like to see her like this. You don’t like that she doesn’t see that she’s all the world to you. She’s the one, usually, who tells you it’ll all be just fine. Somehow though, you and all the worrying in her head made her worry, and you don’t like it one bit. "There’s never been anyone in the world I wanted to marry. Not until you. There’s never going to be anyone else either. I won’t just marry a man for the sake of marrying them, and I won’t love any man, because I love you. Being with you is the only thing that’s ever felt right to me, and don’t need a ring, or a piece of paper, or even God to tell me you’re mine. I keep you inside of my heart. I don’t need to marry you to know o know that I’ll want this always, however we can have, and even more, that I’ll love you always.”

“Will ya?”

“I will.” It feels strangely like you’ve accepted a proposal, though you haven’t, and she holds your cheek in her palm when she kisses you.

When she presses you back into your pillows, she’s tender, but she’s urgent. She’s reverent, but she’s desperate. She liberates you of your garter belt, and she slides your stockings down each leg, making you burn with each touch of her fingers. Then she covers your body with hers, still clothed, only her shirt untucked and her socks off. She kisses you, as she presses two fingers inside of you, and you arch up with each thrust of them, meeting her, matching her. She tells you she loves you in her sweetest voice, and she holds you while you shake and tremble. She adores you, and that’s more than enough.

You’re barely coherent when she gets up from the bed. You’d planned to undress her, to make love to her as well, but she’s quick to her feet, borrowing one of your nightgowns from the top drawer, and going into the bathroom to wash up. It’s unlike her, but perhaps she needs a moment. Perhaps she needs time to process how she’d been feeling just moments before she made love to you.

When she reemerges, you smile at her. Her face is red from scrubbing it clean—she likes your Woodbury soap, she’s told you—and her hair is back in a single braid over her shoulder. Your nightgown is just a little short on her, but you think she looks like an angel. She perches on the edge of the bed, and you know you ought to get up. You ought to put your clothes in the hamper, and you ought to wash up for bed, before your lipstick and powder stain your linens. But just for a moment, you watch her. Just for a moment, you imagine you could be her wife, and she could be yours.

It’s too hard to think of, so you get up. You pull an afghan around yourself, though with the draft in your apartment, your nipples peak, and you’re sure they’re still visible to Brittany. She watches you, and she smiles. She watches you with the look of a painter, and perhaps she is painting you, somewhere in her mind, like you often do to her. She sees you with your makeup smeared on your face, she sees you with your once careful pin curls turned into frizzled ringlets. She sees you, and she smiles, because you’re hers.

Brittany is beneath the covers when you come out of the bathroom. Tomorrow is Sunday, at least, and there’s no rush to wake up. You love it most when she stays on Saturdays, because she doesn’t have to leave before sunrise to get to work. You love it, because you can make her coffee, you can make her breakfast, you can kiss her all morning, with no responsibilities stopping you.

You get into bed beside her, and she rubs your nose with hers. You love that, those Eskimo kisses, and your eyelids flutter with affection. Your ankles tangle with hers, and when you feel her smooth skin brush against yours—even with the socks you wear to bed—and she wraps her arms around you. She holds you tight, and she kisses your neck. She’s yours, and you’re hers, and in the cold of your bedroom, the wind still whipping against the window panes, nothing else matters in the world.


	8. Let Me Dream Forever Underneath the Silvery Sky

The first snow falls. It’s different then the snow that you’re used to. In the city, it would snow while you slept, and you’d wake up to a layer of ash and soot covering it. You’d trudge through it to school, and by the time you got home and bundled the little girls up to take them to the park, it would be trampled and melted. But the snow here, it’s beautiful. The snow here, it blankets the beach, the hull of Captain Pierce’s ferry, pilings around the dock. It blankets everything, and it stays making the cold feel suddenly like it’s not so awful.

For Christmas, you go back to the city. You have to. You’d promised your mama, you’d promised the girls, and with your father away, you won’t break that promise you’d made. The morning you leaves, Brittany rides the ferry with you. You can’t kiss her there, you can’t hold her hand, but she’s there, and the brush of pinkies tells you Brittany isn’t upset you have to go. It tells you that Brittany understands. It tells you that Brittany loves you anyway.

The taxi driver picks you up at the ferry dock, and through the window, you wave to Brittany in her wool cap and long coat. Her wave back is wistful, sad, almost, and looking around to make sure your driver has his eyes on the road, you bring your fingers to your lips. You throw her a kiss, and a grin spreads across her face as she catches it and puts it in her pocket. You love her. You love her so deeply, and the next four days without her, this Christmas without her, is going to feel unbearable.

The city still smells the same. That’s the first thing you notice, when you step off the train at Pennsylvania Station. It still smells the same, as you make your way downtown. It still smells the same as you walk up the stairs, valise in tow, to the apartment you’ve spent most of your life in. It still smells the same, but, much to your surprise, it doesn’t smell like home anymore. The smell of home is different now. The smell of home is hair that’s soaked in sun and salt. It’s fish on the stove, and oil balm on gentle hands. It’s a…a carnal sort of scent, after careful lovemaking. It’s Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. Your home, your love, your everything.

You enjoy your time home. Of course you do, you’d missed them all dearly. You give your sisters the little trinkets you’d picked out from the mail order catalogue—Silly Putty and Slinkies, and even a View-Master for all of them to share. You sit by the fire with your mama at night, talking, talking for hours as you sip the Port her boss had given her for Christmas. It’s hard for you to talk, truly, because the thing you want to talk about most, you can’t, but you tell her about the beach, about the bar, about all of your friends there, Brittany and David and Michael and Arthur. You talk about your little apartment, about the war, about the letters from your father, and you listen to her talk too. Though you’re anxious to be back with Brittany, before the bay freezes over, like you fear, leaving is hard. Leaving means your won’t see your mother and the little ones likely until spring. It’s hard, because you’ll miss them terribly, and you weep, even, as you kiss them all goodbye. You weep more, as your mother brings you back to the train station, hugging you tight, praying to God that you continue to remain safe so far away, thanking you for doing what you are to help your family.

It hard for you on the train ride back. You look out the window at the snow that blankets the ground, but your hands clutch pearl beads, counting them off with your thumbs, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. You hear the Father Miguel’s voice, fresh from the Christmas service, in your head, as your lips form the words of the Lord’s Prayer, Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. You hear it, and you squeeze your eyes shut, that pervasive sort of guilt washing over you. It’s not guilt about Brittany, it’s not even guilt about the unlawful carnal relationship you have with her. It’s guilt over your mother, over the fact that you’re lying, at least by omission, about your intentions of Fire Island. It’s that you’re glad to be helping to support your family, but if it weren’t for the girl you love, the girl you’d mentioned in your days home only in passing, you’d be back in the city, shuffling to work in the dirty snow, making a living some other way.

But Brittany exists. Brittany has given you a reason to stay on the desolate winter island, and for that, you don’t deserve your mother’s praise. It’s an act that helps your family, but it’s not a selfless one. On the contrary, being with her is perhaps the most selfish thing you could do, and no amount of rosaries, no confession or prayer will make you feel sorry for knowing her.

When you get off the train, she’s there at the depot. You see her through the grimy window of the train, hat is askance on her head, her coat pulled tight around her as she shuffles from foot to foot to keep warm. You ache to run to her, you ache leap into her arms and kiss her. You just ache for her, all over. You smell diesel and sea air as you step off the train, and when the frigid winter wind whips through your hair, you pull your coat tighter around your body. As you step toward her, you keep your composure, but when she grins, you’re weak in the knees.

“Afternoon, pretty lady.”

“Brittany.” The wind suddenly stings you less, as you feel the heat creep up your neck. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Pop’s shuttin’ down the ferry. We’ve got a blizzard comin’ in tonight.”

“He’s shutting down the ferry now?” Your eyes widen. “What are we…? How are we…?”

“Mr. Brewster at the yard’s gonna shuttle the boys back in about an hour. I made sure there was room for one more.”

At Brittany’s thoughtfulness, your stomach flutters. You hadn’t even thought of the possibility of Captain Pierce not running the ferry. That boat is the lifeline of the island, he’s steady as a rock, and once the fluttering over Brittany stops, you feel a leaden ball form. You think of the hurricane, and how terribly afraid you were. You think of what would have happened had Brittany not come for you. You think and think, you think too much, until you feel Brittany’s strong hand grip your wrist.

“Visibility’ll be too low, and the winds’ll whip, but winter storms ain’t nothin’ like hurricane season. Pop’ll be out at the wharf in case anyone needs help, best thing’s if we go back to my house, get a fire ready, and wait it out.”

“Okay.” You nod, clutching your bag at my side. “I’d like to stop at my apartment though, if that’s alright.”

“We’ve got plenty'a time, sweetheart, that’s just fine.”

You let her keep her hand on your wrist as she guides you to a red Packard parked in the lot. You hadn’t really considered that she’d know how to drive a car, but considering she captains a boat, it shouldn’t surprise you so much. As she takes your things and puts them in the backseat, she tells you that Mr. Brewster let her borrow his car to come and get you. You wonder, as you always do, who she told him you were. You wonder if she says as you do, back at home, your dear friend. Or you wonder, maybe, if she just refers to you by your profession, Miss Lopez, the bartender at The Casino. You wonder, you wonder, until Brittany puts her gloved hand on top of yours in the center of the seat, lacing her fingers with yours.

It’s something you’d never really given any thought to, holding Brittany’s hand like this in the car. You know some of the girls back in the city, they’d gushed about riding in the car with their suitors, but you think they thought of it, mostly, as knowing that the boy had money to afford one. You might be wrong, you’d never given much mind to the idle chatter about such things, but you don’t think they found a thrill in this, in a strong hand sitting atop their own, in breathing in the closeness of someone they care so deeply about, in every small thing you feel when Brittany is in your proximity.

It’s a short drive, just five minutes to the shipyard, and when you arrive, Brittany opens your door and takes your bags for you. You walk inside of the building, and the volume startles you. You’re used to the bar being boisterous, but in a place of business, it’s surprising. You look around, and you know some of the boys. They’re rowdy, you guess, because they’re getting off early this afternoon, and you stand off in the corner, listening. There’s a tall man in a suit at the desk, and he looks over his glasses, over you a smile and a twinkle of his green eyes. It’s not flirtatious, and in a room full of men, you find yourself appreciative of that, so you give him a smile and a nod back.

When Mr. Brewster comes in, everyone files out the back door to a fishing boat. Brittany stays close to your side, and she offers you a hand up onto the deck. She stands behind you as you grip the railings, glad for your leather gloves that let you grip it easier. The bay is icy, and it looks angry beneath the dark grey sky, but with Brittany beside you, you don’t feel any sort of impending danger. It seems to be that way with everything, her presence gives you a safety and security that you didn’t think possible so far from home. Her presence settles something deep within you, something you didn’t even need settling.

“I’ll run down to the wharf to check in with my Pop while you’re getting things ready.” Brittany tells you, when you make landfall on the island. “If that’s okay.”

“That’s fine.” You nod, fishing in your clutch for your keys. “It shouldn’t take me too long.”

“Take as long as you need.” She promises, then she looks around, before dropping her voice to a whisper. “I love you.”

You just smile softly at her. She knows, in the way you look at her, how much she loves you. She knows, because there may be no fact in the world more indisputable than those three words. She knows, and you feel her eyes on her as you turn toward the stairs.

When you get inside, you look around at your apartment. You’ve only been gone a few days, but there’s an odd sort of relief being back. A relief, because this is your space. This is perhaps the only place in the world where you can be truly authentic. Quickly, you begin to unpack your things, hanging your church clothes and your Christmas dinner clothes in the wardrobe and replacing them in your valise with more appropriate clothing. Once you’ve changed out of your travel outfit, and into a new skirt and sweater, you open the top drawer of your bureau, and you pull out the newsprint wrapped package there. Carefully, you tuck it among the things you’ll take with you to Brittany’s, and when she knocks on the door, you lift your bag, ready to leave before the angry skies break open and spill snow.

“I’m set to go.” You tell her, pulling your coat back down from the hook and slipping into it.

“Can I come in and give ya the kiss I’ve been waitin’ on givin’ ya for four days?”

“Oh.” Your neck heats up again, and your eyes flick down to her lips. You’ve been waiting too, you’ve been thinking about it, and even a brewing storm can’t keep you from stepping back into the apartment, letting her in, wrapping your arms around her neck, and sinking into the kiss she gives you. “It’s good to be home.”

“Home.” Brittany murmurs softly, her cold hand pressing against your face. “I’m real glad ya made it home too.”

You stay like that just for a moment, her coat smelling of Lucky Strikes from the wharf, of cold, of her, and you close your eyes, taking a deep breath of it. When you finally take a step back, you do your buttons, and she lifts your bag, insistent, as she always is, that you let her carry it. Beside her, you walk over the wooden-slatted pathway through the pines, and back to her house.

It’s not often you come back this way. She spends most of her time at your apartment, where you can have privacy, but there’s a sense of familiarity when you walk in. There’s a sort of musty beach smell, one you’ve never smelled anywhere else, and the dim grey light oozes in through streaked grey windows. Firewood is stacked up by the old iron stove, and it doesn’t take long before Brittany’s cat finds you, sidling up to your legs, fur sticking up every which way once the friction against your nylon causes a static reaction.

Brittany brings your valise upstairs. The last time you’d spent the night here, it was on that mattress on the living room floor, but tonight, tonight there’s nothing that’s meant to keep you from sleeping upstairs. Tonight, you’ll sleep beside Brittany in her bed, a place you’ve never been before.

When you walk into the room, you run your fingers over the careworn quilt on her bed. A photograph of her brother sits atop the bureau, smiling with all of his teeth, his uniform pressed, his buttons shiny. Your mother, she keeps your father’s army portrait on the mantle, so you’re surprised that this is the first you’ve seen of Brittany’s brother in his uniform, but when you notice the Purple Heart that lays beside it, when you see the photograph beside it, the woman in white, you understand why. You understand that some things are best kept in private. Some things are best kept where you don’t have to explain them.

“Pop’s got his flag.” She tells you, by way of explanation. “He let me keep his medal, said he’d’ve wanted me to keep it. I think if he was wantin’ things, he’d’ve not wanted one at all.”

“Brittany.” You whisper, unsure of what else to say.

“I though about goin’ with him, ya know. Learnin’ to be a nurse, or somethin’. But he didn’t want me to leave Pop all alone.”

“I…” A pang hits you hard in your chest at the thought, and you snap your mouth shut again.

“Have you hear from your Pop lately?”

“I got a letter from him just before Christmas. He’s in France still. He doesn’t tell me much about the fighting over there. He mostly writes about the people he meets, and lets me know what he thinks of the books I send him.”

“That’s for the best, I’d say.”

“It is.” You nod, looking back to the medal on the chest of drawers. “I just want it to be over.”

“What happens when it’s over, Santana? What happens when the boys all come home?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens to me ‘n’ you? What’ll ya do when your Pop comes back home? Are ya gonna go back home?”

“I—” You shake your head, you shake it back and forth. “I think this is home now. You’re home to me. I don’t think I could go back without you if I tried. If Mr. Edja let’s me go, then…I don’t know. I’ll figure out a way to stay here, if you were serious about all those things we talked about a few weeks back.”

“I better get started on buildin’ ya that house then.” A slow smile spreads across her mouth, and you suck in a breath.

“I don’t expect you to take care of me, Brittany. I took typing courses in school. Maybe I could get a job at the school in Ocean Beach, or I could take the ferry back and forth each day and work on the mainland. I don’t know, I haven’t given it much thought. It feels like the war might never end. But I’ll find a way to stay, no matter what.”

“I would, ya know.”

“What?”

“Take care'a ya. Buy ya pretty things, make sure ya were really happy that ya stayed with me.”

“I don’t need pretty things to know that I’d be happy that I stayed with you.” You step closer, and you press your hand to the side of her face, looking into ocean blue eyes. “You make me happy enough.”

“I did already buy ya somethin’ pretty.”

“You did?”

“It was Christmas and all.” She shrugs. “I wanted to take a walk on the beach and give it to ya, before the storm comes, if ya wanted to.”

You nod. It’s all you can manage to accomplish. The idea that she’d buy you something pretty makes your knees turn to gelatin. She’s something else, deep within your soul, you know that she’s the most special kind of something else. Not because she bought you something, but because she just thinks of you. She sees you. She knows you. You close your eyes again, just for another moment. You think of what she’d said about loving you like man and woman are supposed to love each other. You think of the picture she’d painted in your mind. The picture of a house all your own, where she’d come home each night from the water to you. The picture of a life, where it’s you and her, together always. You think of it, and you know it’s real, you know it’s more than just a picture.

You’re quiet as you put your warm things on. You tuck the newsprint wrapped package beneath your coat, and you go back downstairs. Brittany opens the door for you, blanket in hand, and you step out into the blister-cold air. Snow had started falling, not thick, heavy bits, but flurries, fluttering down and landing in the brush along the walkway. You look at Brittany then, flakes settling on her hat, on her eye lashes, on the shoulders of her coat, on the golden braid that falls down her back. You look at her, and you’re taken by her beauty.

The sand crunches beneath your boots when you reach the beach, and though sometimes, you long for the summer days, for her chasing you into moonlit waves and dancing beneath the stars, where no one can see you, there’s something stunning about this as well. Something stunning about the stark, windswept beach, and something stunning about having it in the daylight hours, all to yourself.

Just past the dunes, Brittany spreads the blanket out, and when she sits, you follow her. She takes your hands immediately and settles them between her knees, knowing that they get cold, even with your gloves on. You turn to face her, and you study her face. Her cheeks are red and chapped, and her chin has a scrape, probably from something at the shipyard, but her eyes still sparkle, her eyes still never fail to reveal the depth of her love for you.

“Ocean’s churnin’ somethin’ ugly.” She looks out to the horizon line and purses her lips. “I don’t know how some’ve then fellas up North’ll fish all winter long. I wouldn’t want'a be out there in this.”

“I’m sure glad you’re not either. I worry enough when you’re out there in the sunshine.”

“You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about ya know. We’re real safe, and the Coast Guard’s all up and down these waters all day long.”

“Still.” You shrug, feeling a twist in your stomach at the thought of something ever happening to her. “I feel an awful lot better when you’re on land.”

“Bein’ on land means I get to hold your hands like this, so I’ve got'a say, I favor it too.”

“You’re always full of charm, aren’t you.”

“Not much, just want to say sweet things to my girl.”

“I love being your girl, Brittany.” You lean your head on her shoulder, an icy wind whipping off the ocean and biting your face. “So much.”

“I hope ya like this gift I got.” She reaches into the pocket of her coat, and hands you a small package wrapped in butcher paper. “I had the salesgirl at Woolworth’s help me.”

The box feels so delicate, and when you take it from Brittany’s hands, you hear something slide inside. As carefully as you can in your gloves, you unwrap the brown paper, and lift the lid of the box, sucking in frigid air as you reveal a silver bracelet. You’ve seen ones like it before, some of the girls in your high school had worn them, but your family never had the kind of money to spend on adornments like this. Slowly, you cock your head toward Brittany, and you feel her studying your reaction. Eyes on her still, you lift it out, and you study the three charms that adorn the link bracelet. A boat and a heart, dangling in silver.

“Brittany…this is…it’s too much.” You fight the urge to push it back to her, to tell her she needs to take it back to the store, to get her money back, because there’s far more important things she could be spending it on.

“Do ya not like it? The salesgirl said that lots'a girls are wearin’ them, and I thought…”

“No, no.” You shake your head. “I love it. It’s so beautiful, but it’s just too much. You shouldn’t have bought me something so nice.”

“I wanted to. I told ya, I want to buy ya pretty things. I picked out the boat, because'a me, the heart, because I love you, and the flag, so you don’t feel so sad about your pop bein’ so far away.”

“I didn’t…I didn’t get you anything even close to as nice.” Biting your lip, you take your package out from under your coat. Her thoughtfulness has you reeling, and you struggle to keep it together.

“You got me a gift?” Brittany’s eyes widen, and she looks at you, watching your one hand still finger the bracelet, while the other thrusts her gift toward her. You’re embarrassed, mostly, that she’s given you something so nice, so expensive, and what you have is scarcely comparable. “I’ve never gotten a Christmas gift before.”

“You…what?”

“My pop always bought us what we needed.” She shrugs. “He’s not so much about the holiday time. I guess they remind him of my ma too much.”

“It’s…it’s not that much. If I’d have known…” You stumble over your words. You’re not sure what you’d have gotten her if you’d known. You’re not sure what else you could have done to give her Christmas, but you squirm as she undoes the wrapping. You squirm, because you feel like kind of a dummy. “I made it for you.”

“You made this?” Brittany unfolds the scarf you made her, spending long mornings knitting the soft, bright blue yarn you’d gotten from the mail order catalogue. Her gloved fingers play with the material, and you watch her, nervous, cautious. “Maybe I’m all soppy ‘cause I’m sweet on ya, but this is swanky!”

“I’d have got you something else, but—”

“Why’d ya’ve gotten me somethin’ else?” She wraps the scarf around her neck, twisting the ends. “I’ve been needin’ a new warm scarf, and it’s even better, havin’ one you knitted for me. Thank you Santana, I’ll keep it always.”

“It’s just a scarf.” You shrug, still feeling she lush about the whole thing. She looks at you though, she looks so deep into you, and you shiver.

“It’s a real nice scarf, and most importantly, it’s a scarf ya made for me, the most special part of it.”

She leans over then, and for a moment, you think she’s going to kiss your lips, right there on the beach in the daylight. But she doesn’t, instead, she presses them to your forehead. She lets them linger there, a certain sort of intimacy, and this deep, deep love for you. It makes your chest ache, when it hits you, it makes your pulse quicken, and your palms twitch. You long to kiss her here, you long to press your hands to face as the snow falls, and the wind whips around you. You long to just…give her so many things you can’t, you long to give her everything she’s never had. You long for her, even as she sits right beside you.

But instead, you let her take off her glove and fasten your bracelet for you. You let her fingers graze the back of your hand, and then you pull your coat more tightly around yourself and you look out at the sea. Breathing in the sea air, with Brittany so close to you, you feel this sense of belonging. This sense that no one can ever drag you away from here, because your soul has been firmly rooted to this windswept island. From the water before you, you bring your eyes back to the bracelet, and you take another deep breath. A boat and a heart, because while your soul is rooted here, your heart goes with her, each and every time she goes out to sea.

“Snow’s gettin’ heavy, and it’s startin’ t'get dark. We oughta make our way back up to the house.”

Another shiver runs through you, this time from the cold, seeping beneath your nylons, and you nod, letting her offer you a hand to help you back to your feet. She hooks her arm with yours, and together, you leave the beach. Your fingers wrap around the empty bracelet box is your pocket, and you feel a flutter in your chest again. You feel this specialness, for lack of a better word. You feel such a deep sense of gratitude that your starry eyed fishergirl found you, that she loves you, that she wants to be with you, for as long as your time on earth will allow.

When you get back inside of Brittany’s house, you brush the snow off in the doorway. Your coat has protected you from most of the dampness outside, but your face is smeared with makeup, and your cheeks are chapped from the ice that blows of the ocean. Lord Tubbington skulks in the foyer, and while you slip out of your winter coat, you watch Brittany fold her new scarf is such a reverent way that your chest pangs.

The storm picks up as Brittany heats up navy beans and toast for dinner. It’s something you still struggle to get used to, the way every wind shakes the buildings here, so different from your brick apartment on Hester Street, but it’s a reality. The clapboards don’t keep out the cold the same, and they certainly don’t seem to stand as sturdy as the wind blows. Still though, you’re safe. Brittany lights a fire, and when you’re through eating, you scrub yourself clean, and you change into your pajamas, pulling a sweater over them for extra warmth.

It doesn’t take long before the cold proves to much for you to bear. You manage to make it to the end of The Adele Clark Show, sharing the fig pudding you’d brought back from the city, but when it closes, even Brittany can tell you’re ready for bed, and she turns the radio off. When you go upstairs to her bedroom, you carefully unhook your bracelet and lay it on the bureau for safekeeping, before you crawl beneath the quilts on her bed, glad for the warmth they provide. Outside the window, you see nothing but snow in the darkness, and while you wait for Brittany to get into bed with you, you close your eyes and pray, hands folded, your mouth moving, but no words coming out.

Dear God, please watch over Papa. Keep him safe and bring him home. Watch over Mama and the little girls, and Abuelita too. And please, please keep Brittany safe every day she goes out on the water, or she works with dangerous machinery in the boatyard. Please don’t allow my sin to cast a shadow over her well being. And please, please forgive me because I cannot give up the love I have for her, nor do I want you to make me capable of that.

You say four Hail Marys, and the Apostles’ Creed before you feel the bed sink beside you. You don’t open your eyes, but finish your list of prayers as you feel Brittany’s chin on your shoulder. When you say your final Amen, you breathe in deeply, before you turn to face her, opening your eyes to her bright blue. She doesn’t ask about your prayers, she never does, she just opens your arms, and lets you curl in closer to her. You savor this feeling, her arms around you, the safety they provide as the storm rattles the windows and the snow blankets the world outside.

“Ya warm enough now, Santana?”

“Mmhm.” You murmur. “Very warm.”

“Are ya sure? 'Cause I can get ya another blanket from downstairs. I know ya have two on your bed.”

“No, I’m alright, I promise. I hope I’m not stealing all of your body heat.”

“Not one bit. I’m just real glad ya made it back home tonight. I missed ya a lot.”

“I missed you too. I wish I could have spent Christmas with you…”

“’S'alright. Ya haven’t seen your family in awhile, and I got to have Christmas with ya today. I really love my scarf, y'know. I’ll be wearing it everyday.”

“Next year, I’ll give you a real Christmas.” You murmur, a promise you’re sure that you’ll keep.

“Next year.” She smiles. “I’m so glad you’re back, Santana.”

“And I’m so glad I’m home.”


	9. Always a Heartbeat From Me

In late winter, the snow begins to melt. You watch from the bar window as Brittany, David and Michael get The Alcott back in the water. You watch as she undoes her coat, even in the cold, and she kneels over the hull, scrubbing the grime of winter from the deck. You watch as she ties lines, hauls water, and hoists the sales. You watch, and you feel this heavy sort of sadness that comes from her. It’s been nearly a year, you know, since her brother left for Europe, the strong young man in brass buttons and a charming smile. It’s been nearly a year since she last said farewell to him. Nearly a year since he promised her a speedy return, only to lose his life on a bloody beach four months later.

  
Your heart aches for her. You don’t know what it feels like to be the surviving child, to live out the legacy meant for another, to work each day on a boat that shouldn’t have been yours. You don’t know, but you try to understand. You try to soothe her at night without words, you kiss the crown of her head, you dig your thumbs into the tightened muscles of her shoulders, and you love her, you love with with all you have.

At night, you listen to the radio. You weep as you hear of the German army is in retreat, you weep as your mind races, unable to imagine the atrocities that have happened halfway across the world. Things are changing in Europe, big things. A year ago, you’d believed the war might never end, but now, you feel it closer than ever. Now, you wonder what will happen, when everything turns right side up again.

“I want to go to Arlington.” Brittany whispers to you, late one night, her nose pressed to yours. “We didn’t go down for'is funeral. Pop didn’t want to go, and doesn’t wan'to go now, but I think I need'ta see where he is.”

“Can you?”

“I asked around, I can take the train to New York, and then another down to Virginia. I can call down and get a hotel for the night, then come on back up the next morning. I know ’t’s a lot, but…I think I ought to.”

“Then you should.” You find her hand beneath the sheets, and you squeeze it, you squeeze it hard.

“I know ya have work, and things, but do ya think maybe…if I went down on a Sunday, and got back b'fore the bar was to open Monday…do ya think ya might think about comin’ with me?”

“Brittany.” You breathe, once again feeling the gravity of your relationship with this woman, once again feeling just how deep your feelings run.

“If ya don’t want to, I won’t be sore, or nothin’…”

“I do.” You murmur, pressing your thumb against her palm. “Whenever you want to go, I’ll be there with you.”

“Thank ya.” Tears form in the corners of her eyes, and you lean in, gently kissing them away. “Thank ya so much.”

Brittany makes the arrangements. She refuses your money, when you offer it up to her for train tickets and for the hotel. But she asks for your help, when she comes over, carrying a black dress. Patiently, she stands while you take in the sides and take out the sleeves and hem. You’re careful not to prick her, you’re careful to be gentle when she fidgets. And then you step back, taking in her solemn demeanor.

You’re set to leave at four-fifteen in the morning. David agreed to take you across the bay before Captain Pierce does the first ferry run, and you wake up at three-thirty, taking pains with pinning your hair back. It’s biting cold, when you step out into the morning air, valise in hand, but when you see Brittany in her black dress, heavy coat unbuttoned, your homemade hat covering her head, hands twisted in front of her, you feel a certain warmth rise up in you. You want to go to her, you want to take her into your embrace, to kiss away her sad eyes, but you can’t. Instead, you give her a small nod, and you step quickly toward the edge of the dock, accepting David’s hand when he helps you down onto the dinghy.

A taxi takes you from the dock to the train station, and when you arrive, you remember that Brittany has never ridden the train before, you remember that she’s never set foot in the city that brought you up. She presses her face to the window, eyes wide, as the winter-washed terrain whizzes past, and she breathes in the scent of diesel. You sit quietly beside her, watching, and every so often, she turns to give you a small, tired smile.

When you arrive in the city, you wish you could take Brittany somewhere. To Strand, perhaps, where she could meander with you between the shelves, turning the pages of Betty Smith, hiding _Lillian_ Smith behind a National Geographic, because you fear someone seeing you read it. To Russ and Daughters, maybe, where you’d introduce her to knish, something your mother just can’t get her brain around. To the Navy Yard, possibly, where she’d take interest in watching the great steel ships being built. But more than anything, you wish to take her home. You wish to walk through the door with her, and tell your Mama you’ve fallen in love. You wish for her to bring out her wedding dress after everyone else has gone to bed, and to speak to you in the darkness, a hurried Spanish whisper, about when you think your day will come to wear it.

It’s fanciful thinking, you know that much. You’ve married Brittany in your heart all those months back, but there won’t be a white dress, or a cake, or Father Tómas, blessing your union. Those things, they’re not what you wish for, truly, but to have your mother know the truth about who Brittany is, you’d love that more, perhaps, than anything.

You brush those thoughts aside as you board the train. You’ve only taken a journey this great once. You were twelve, and your Tia Alba was gravely ill in Chicago. Your mother, with little Nina just weeks old, couldn’t make the trip, so she’d sent you. Your shoes were shined, and your hair was braided, and you’d sat, still as a statue, watching the great sea of green grass roll by you, sleeping straight up, as the train rolled overnight. You were a child still, but you were the oldest, and when you arrived at Alba’s, she was already with God. You stayed a single night, with six-week old Concetta in bed with you, and when you awoke the next morning, Tio Sebastián had handed you two bundles, one of clothing and diapers, and the other, the baby.

“I brought Concetta on the train from Chicago when she was a baby.” You find yourself telling Brittany. “I think she was as afraid as I was, she barely whimpered for the entire day long trip.”

“Concetta, your little sister? Why was she in Chicago?” Brittany turns from the window to look at you, fidgeting with her nylons.

“She was my cousin, before Mama and Papa took her in. When my aunt passed away, she was raised like Nina’s twin. She’s only two weeks older.”

“Hm. That was awful nice of your Mama and Papa.”

“Just the way things are done, I suppose.” You shrug. “You’d like her a lot, Mama says she’s just like my _tia._ ”

“Maybe I’ll get to meet her someday…”

“Maybe so.” You sigh wistfully, watching your city disappear out the window. “Are you alright?”

“I’m sad, ya know? I wish Pop’d wanted to come see it. I know he ain’t there, but…now that they’re liberatin’ the camps and it’s almost over…”

“He’d know he’d died for something worthwhile.”

“So pretty out there.” Brittany changes the subject quickly, and you give her hand a quick, undetectable squeeze.

“It is. Nice way to see the country, I think.”

You fall asleep on the train. You’d hardly slept last night, and the scenery whizzing by lulls you. When train screeches to a halt in Arlington, you wake with a start. You look over at Brittany, your starry-eyed fishergirl, and she’s biting her lip, nails digging into her thigh. She’ll rip her nylons, you think, but you don’t say a word. She has a right to be nervous, she has _every_ right to be nervous, and you meet her eyes before you stand.

Another taxi cab takes you to the cemetery. Brittany asks the driver to wait, and he nods, tipping his cap to her. In her hand, she clutches a piece of paper, and you follow a few steps behind as she walks through row after row of flag lined final resting places. She stops abruptly, and you bump into her back. She’s frozen, and you look down at the marker, _William Colin Pierce, PFC, US Army, August 1 1923, June 6 1944._

“Hey Willy.” She whispers, touching her hand to the top of the stone. “Uh, I’m sorry Pop couldn’t come. He’s missin’ ya somethin’ awful. I brought someone to meet ya though. Ya were the first one t'know I was a little funny, and, well…this is Santana. She’s real pretty, and you’d like her a lot.”

You step a little closer to the grave, and you slip your hand into Brittany’s. You’re alone in this place, and even if you weren’t, a gesture of comfort to the bereaved wouldn’t raise much of an eyebrow. She squeezes, and when you look at her face, she has tears running down.

“I don’t even know how t'say a prayer for'im. Would ya do it, maybe?”

“Is it something you’d like?”

“I think so. Ya always sound real pretty when ya pray, and he might like it.”

“Okay.” You nod slowly, making the Sign of the Cross. _“God, our Father, Your power brings us to birth, Your providence guides our lives, and by Your command, we return to dust.”_

You recite the words, slowly, carefully, picturing the boy in the photographs, the young man in the uniform, the face, so much like your Brittany’s. When you’re finished, you murmur an _Amen,_ and you hear it echo in Brittany’s voice. She lingers a little, when you’re through, picking out invisible weeds that grow in the dead grass, rubbing the cold letters that mark his name. This is the closest you’ve ever seen Brittany to crumbling, and you long to gather her up in your arms.

It starts to rain, just drops at first, cold, and icy. Brittany hastily says her goodbyes to her brother, and as she steps back from the grave, the skies open up and rain falls in heavy sheets. You begin to run, pulling your hat to cover your face, and she’s right at your side, despite the fact that her stride is much longer than yours. When you reach the idling taxi, she slides opens your door first, and you slide in, making room for her to fit.

When Brittany checks into the hotel, Santana stays back a bit from the desk. She may live in a place where she’s free as a colored woman to go where she chooses, but she knows Virginia isn’t Fire Island, and she’d rather keep her face hidden beneath her hat, and stand holding the bags, while Brittany speaks to the attendant. The questions Santana fears don’t come, and still dripping and cold, she follows Brittany up the stairs, breathing a sigh of relief, when she closes the door to room 3B.

“Real swanky place.” Brittany surveys the room, looking at the two single beds, and the desk between them. “I’m sorry ya got all wet though.”

“Please don’t be, I’m grateful you got to go before the rain.”

“Me too. I know we oughta get some dinner, but I’m exhausted. Do ya mind if we lay down a bit?”

“I don’t mind that at all. I packed a lunch for the train that we never ate, if you’d like that for dinner instead.”

“That sounds real nice.” She nods, fumbling as she tries to remove her wet nylons. “Damn things.”

“Would you like some help?” You ask, watching her sink down on one of the beds in frustration. You know it’s not the nylons that have her so upset, but after such a draining day, it’s only natural that she’d find something tangible to take her emotions out on.

“He’d have thought it was a hoot, me gettin’ dressed up like this. He’d’ve asked me why I looked like I feel outta Norma Jean’s closet. But I wanted to look proper when I saw it, not traipsin’ around there in rolled up slacks and such.”

“You look beautiful.” You approach her slowly, and you push the wet hair from her face, longing to kiss her lips. “But you always do.”

“I miss him so much. I meant it when I said he’d’ve like you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to know him.” You undo the buttons on her dress as you speak, and you press a soft kiss to her collarbone. “You ought to dry your hair, you’ll catch a cold if you sleep like that.”

“Okay.” She nods, but doesn’t move, instead watching you slide off her dress, leaving her nylons and underthings.

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

“Would ya?” Deep blue eyes meet yours, and you give her a soft smile, taking up one of the towels left on the bed.

“Close your eyes.”

Taking your time, you massage her scalp, and you run the towel down through her long blonde locks. You love taking care of her like this, and you love that she lets you. When her hair is dry enough, you comb your fingers through, and start a braid. She watches you as you do, fingers quick, and when you tie off the end, she takes your hands in hers.

“Ya still got your wet clothes on.”

“I know, I’ll get them off soon enough.”

“You’re beautiful.” She whispers, and your heartbeat quickens in your chest. “Everything about ya.”

“Brittany.” You flush, and she kisses the side of your face.

She peels her nylons off, and quickly changes into her flannel nightgown. You watch her intently as she settles on the bed, eyes burning into you, and you undress quickly, drying your hair, drying your skin, and pulling socks onto your cold feet, before you slide into your satin button up.

You bring the sandwiches over to her, and you sit cross legged on the bed, eating in near silence. Brittany’s eyes continue to droop, and you run your thumb over the sagging skin beneath them. She never sleeps enough, you’re certain of that, but last night, you think, perhaps, that she slept more than ever.

“It’s hardly six-o'clock.” She yawns.

“That’s alright. We have to leave early tomorrow morning anyhow. I could sleep for the night, if you’re ready.”

“I think I am.” She nods, and you wrap the remainders of your sandwiches up, urging her to lie down.

Once the room is straightened up, your clothes from today draped over the heater, and your things for the morning spread across the empty bed, you crawl under the covers with her. For a long while, she doesn’t say a word, she just studies your face. It makes you squirm sometimes, the way she looks at you like you’re all that exists in the world, but tonight, you don’t. Tonight, you let yourself be that. Tonight, you find her hand beneath the dingy hotel quilt, and you wait for her tears to come.

“He’d have been comin’ home soon, I think.” She tells you. “Makes me sadder. When the war wasn’t close t'over, I didn’t feel it so much. He coulda just been over there, fightin’ with no time to write letters. But it’s gonna end soon, and he won’t be barrelin’ through the door with his grin and some stories like Art.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that.”

“I’m really glad ya came with me.”

“I wouldn’t have liked it much, thinking of you all by yourself on the train, in this bed. I wanted to be with you.”

“I told my Pop I’m gonna be buildin’ a house soon.”

“Brittany…”

“Case Larry wants to send ya on home when the boys come back, I need t'be sure ya won’t have to. If ya still want that.”

“It won’t change.” You twist the bracelet on your wrist, and you shuffle closer, impossibly closer to her. “I don’t know what I’ll be good for there, if I don’t have the bar to tend, but I don’t want to go.”

“Ya know you’re good for lotsa things, I still think ya should be a schoolteacher. They always want someone who ain’t married, and they don’t have t'know we’re as good as. Ya have so many books and things by your bed. The kids’d like learnin’ from you.”

“Maybe.” You tell her, though you’re not certain that you could just go and _be_ a schoolteacher. “And what about your father?”

“He thinks it’s just fine if I want t'build my own place. He won’t think nothin’ of ya movin’ in neither. When spring comes, I’ll start bringin’ lumber over.”

“How on Earth will you find the time to do all of this?”

“Michael and Davey, and even Art’ll help. I know just where I wanna build it, and I’ll take ya over there when we get home, see if ya like it too. If ya do, I’ll go on and get the deed for the land.”

“You.” You close your eyes, nose to nose, you think of fairy tales, of the sleeping princess. Of Louisa May Alcott, and wild Jo March. Of Jane Austen, and stubborn Elizabeth Bennett. You think of how their stories wouldn’t have changed much, had a beautiful woman come to them, rather than a prince, or a professor, or a wealthy gentleman. Brittany, whisking you off to a home she built on the seashore is more beautiful, certainly, but not much different at all. “I’ll love it, wherever it is, whatever it is.”

“I want ya to have a say though, alright?”

“Alright, Brittany, that sounds perfect.”

“I’m so tuckered out. I want to stay up all night and talk to ya about it, but I won’t make it much longer.”

“Go to sleep, we’ve got all the tomorrows in the world.”


	10. Girl, I've Never Loved One Like You

The sun is shining, and you sit on the bench outside of the bar, with the brim of your hat shading your face. When the mail had come earlier on, you’d found beneath the letter from your mother—dotted with markings from the little girls— a brown paper wrapped package bearing your name. You’d torn it open quickly, finding a slightly earmarked book beneath it. You fingers had caressed the hard cover, and in your mother’s letter, she revealed to you that your old teacher had dropped by, telling that she thought you may enjoy it.

So far, you’re completely enamored by it, turning the pages faster and faster to learn more about Janie and Nanny, and life down somewhere in Florida. The world beyond your book blurs, and it takes a tap on your forearm for you to notice the presence of someone before you. When you glance up, it’s Arthur, book of his own in his lap, and you inhale sharply, still unsure what sort of things you should say around him.

 

“Jus’ figured I’d say good morning, what with everyone else working, there ain’t many folks to talk to ‘round here.”

“Good morning.” You nod in response. “It’s a nice day to read at least.”

“That’s what my Ma said too. She’s been buying whatever books she can manage t'afford for me. Thinks I oughta keep my mind busy, so I don’t go crazy. But lemme let ya in on a secret, lookin’ at this water all day’s sure to make me go that way.”

“I’m sorry for that.” You nod again, truly meaning it. He loves it, you think, perhaps as much as Brittany does, and you consider what you love most, Brittany and your family aside. Books, probably, more than most things, and you imagine bring unable to read them, while someone dangles one just out of your reach. “Brittany says she’s trying to figure out a way though.”

“She means well, but even she knows it’s foolish to be bringin’ me out on the boat. I’ll be in with the fish before we get outta the harbor.”

“I’m sorry.” You repeat. Frankly, you’re not quite sure what else you can say. You’re friendly enough with Arthur, sure, but you’ve never really had much of a conversation with him on your own. He makes you sad, mostly, and then you feel awful for feeling sad about him.

“You’re real sweet on her, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Brittany.”

“I…” Alarmed—not that he knows, but that he speaks of it so publicly—you glance around, seeing that you truly are alone. “I am, yes.”

“I weren’t sure at first. I knew she was sweet on you just from how much she wrote of you in her letters, but I weren’t sure you felt the same until I saw you with my own eyes.”

“Alright.” You nod, speechless again, and you look at the book in his lap. “What are you reading?”

 _“For Whom the Bell Tolls._ Just started it, actually.”

“That’s about the Spanish Civil War, isn’t it?”

“It is. Still like war books, I guess.” He shrugs, and looks over at the harbor. “Alcott’s heading back in, it looks.”

“Later than I thought, must have been a good day.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything else, he just stares wistfully out at the boat. You lift your book again, though you don’t read the words on the page. You’re staring at the Alcott too, you always are, when you’re lucky enough to see it come into the harbor. Watching Brittany at the helm is one of your favorite things, you’ve decided. She’s so sure, so calm and confident, and you always listen to the way she asserts her orders.

Because it’s warm today, both her shirtsleeves and trouser legs are rolled up, and her cap is awry on her head. When she catches sight of you on the dock, she lifts it and feigns a bow, grinning all the while. It makes you feel so special, and you make to stand, closing up your book again, and tucking it beneath the folded sweater you’d removed earlier.

Sometimes, you wonder how it would feel for her to jump off the boat and wrap you in her arms, the way she does behind closed doors. You wonder what it would feel like to kiss her on the dock in the broad light of day. You wonder how it would be if you could tell people how sweet you are on her. But when you have those thoughts, you finger the cross around your neck. The sin is in the saying it out loud. The sin is in letting anyone else know your brazenness, your deep desires, and your cheeks feel warm when you meet her deep blue eyes.

“Afternoon, Miss.” Brittany beams. “Hey ya, Art.”

You can’t do anything but smile. She has that effect on you sometimes, and you’re grateful she begins unloading her cargo, so you can stop catching flies and take in the bustle of her crew. They toss down barrels of fish, and you can’t help another smile that crosses your face. It was a good day. She’s going to be exhausted, but it will have been worth all her efforts. It’s early in the season, and she’s told you how much she hopes to get off to a good start. It’s harder for her, you think, then she lets on. Being a girl captain means she has to work twice as hard, has to prove herself every step of her way, and when she finally swaggers down off her boat, a wide grin splits her face, and she yanks off her cap.

“Afternoon, Miss Lopez.” She winks at you, and you’re glad you’re sitting down, or your knees would have gone weak.

“Good afternoon, Brittany.” You smile in return.

She busies herself again, haggling with one of the wholesalers on the dock, and you attempt to focus on the words on the page before you. _The idea was funny to them and they wanted to laugh. They tried hard to hold it in, but incredulous laughter burst from their eyes and leaked out of the corners of their mouths to inform anyone of their thoughts._ It takes you longer than you’d hoped to read a half a page, but with Brittany, talking fast, as she does, it seems only natural that you’d find it difficult to focus.

“Headin’ on home.” Brittany approaches you, stopping so the toes of her worn boots just barely touch the toes of your flats. Her voice lowers distinctly, and you see the gleam in her eyes. “Gonna bathe and all, then I was hopin’ ya might wanna walk with me somewhere.”

“They would be nice.” You nod, unable to look directly in her eyes, for fear you’ll give yourself away. You’re a strange sort of soft today, and you can’t quite put your finger on why. “I’ll meet you down the walk in an hour?”

“I’ll be waitin’.” She tips her hat again, and you nod, concealing your smile behind the cover of your book.

You wave goodbye to Art and the others, and you head up to your apartment. Your skin is flushed from the warmth of the day, and you wipe your lipstick from your mouth before you splash water on your face. The bar is closed today, for the repairs Mr. Edja wants to make before the summer comes, and Brittany knows as much. You don’t have to walk quickly, in order to make it back for opening, and you unbutton your blouse, and slide out of your skirt, changing the day’s wilted clothing for the green collared dress you’d ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalogue.

After you carefully reapply your powder and lipstick, you take down the sweater hanging on the back of your door, and you lay it over your arm, checking your reflection. You consider bringing something down for dinner, but everything you have will take time to cook, and you don’t want to waste time. You’d rather cook for her later, if she wants to come home with you. You’d rather cook for her when she sits, elbows on your table, watching her with that look in her eyes you love so much.

She’s waiting for you on the walkway when you arrive, and she smiles at you, a private smile. Wordlessly, you step to her side, and you feel her fingers graze the back of your wrist, just for a moment in time. You’re not sure where she’s taking you, but she walks slowly, meandering down to the beach, picking up seashells for the collection you’ve started, and showing them to you before she slips them into the pocket of her slacks. It’s easy this way, and you steal glances at her, wishing you could photograph her like this, wishing you could keep her as she is forever.

“Where are we going?” You ask her finally, when you’re far down the beach, and in complete solitude.

“’S a surprise.” She shrugs, patting the pocket of her shirt. “But I sure would like to kiss ya now, if that’s alright.”

“It is. I’d like that quite a bit.”

It’s one of her gentle kisses. It’s not the sort that you have in your bedroom, the kind where you taste where she’d traveled upward from on her lips. The kind where you’re still breathing hard and draped across your pillow, and she’s insistent upon loving your mouth the way she’d loved your other parts. It’s soft, and its tender. It’s _I missed you, I love you, I’m glad you’re here_ all rolled into one. It’s your favorite kind, if you’re being truthful. It’s the kind you know that she’s only ever given to you. Passion, as you’ve read in your books, isn’t necessarily something that one’s only ever shared with the one who owns their heart, and perhaps Brittany has shared that passion with someone who came before. But these sort of kisses, they’re different, you can feel it. These sort of kisses are for the one who holds you, heart and soul.

“Ya look real pretty today.” She tells you. “Dress is nice.”

“Mama told me I should order something for myself, since I’ve been sending so much money back to her and the kids and all.”

“Makes me love ya more, if I’m bein’ truthful. Takin’ care of your family like that.”

“She’s got an awful lot of mouths to feed, and it’s the least I can do. I’m here…feeling so happy, and I’ve got some guilt about it. I think she must be lonely there, with Papa gone, and me gone.”

“What about your, ah—ahb—” Brittany furrows her brow, trying to remember the word, you can tell, and it makes you smile.

 _“Abuelita.”_ You touch her hand gently, and you shake your head. “I think it’s different with her. She’s very old, and she’s very critical of Mama. It’s not companionship, so much, I don’t think.”

“I’m sorry I stole you from her, then.” She looks down, and you step forward, tilting her chin up again.

“Please don’t be. She expects I’ll be married in a few years, and leave home anyway. I’ve just…gotten an earlier start is all. But Papa will be back soon. She’ll have him, and the little girls are growing quickly. I wouldn’t choose to go back now. I’ve promised you already that I’d like to stay near you.”

“I’m glad for that, ya know.” Her face brightens, and it lights up your heart. “Come on up off the beach now, I needta show ya what I dragged ya on out here for.”

She takes your hand in hers, and without sparing another moment, she leads you up through a grove of chokecherries and pine, stopping in when a branch lashes your face. Quickly, you press your hand to the wound, hoping to stave off the bleeding you know is to come, and her eyes widen in alarm.

“It’s alright, just a scratch.” You tell her, not wanting to worry her more than is necessary.

“Let me see it.” She removes your hand, squinting at the bloodline that forms on your cheek. Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a handkerchief, and presses it against your skin, warmth of her own hand radiating through the cloth. “Ain’t very romantic if I bring ya on through this mess and get ya cut up.”

“It’s romantic how quickly you tend to me.” You shake your head, smile forming even with the sting under your skin. “And I do like this place, shaded under the grove.”

“I bought it.”

“You…bought it?”

“Parcel'a land was up for grabs, and I wanted one that was off the path a while. I’m gonna build ya a house, right in this spot.”

“You’re…you’re what?” You choke out, voice strangled with emotion.

“I could sell it off again, if ya don’t like it much. Or if ya changed your mind about the stayin’. But I couldn’t let it get snatched up by someb'dy else when I wanted it so badly.”

“You’re…you’re planning to build a house here?”

“Well yeah, I told ya I would. I had all kinds'a money saved up from last summer. Don’t spend much here as it is, and since ya been feedin’ me all winter, I’ve been spendin’ even less'f it. Got plenty left to buy all the stuff I need to build, and get ya some fancy things to put inside.”

“I don’t need fancy things.” You press your body against hers, breathing in her woody scent, feeling dizzy from it all. “I don’t need anything. Just you.”

“I think ya might need some things.” She laughs, still holding the handkerchief to your face. “It’d be awful empty without things at all, and how’d we eat without pots and pans and dishes?”

“You’re really going to build a house for us?”

“We’ve gotta have somewheres to live, and I’d much rather have it be all private like, than sneakin’ around between Pop’s place and your apartment. Here I could kiss ya any time I please, and if I build the house tall enough over the trees, ya could even watch my boat come on in like I know ya like t'do.”

“Brittany.” You feel tears begin to fall from your eyes, wetting the handkerchief on your face.

“I hope ya aren’t cryin’ 'cuz ya don’t want it. ’S okay, if ya don’t. I’d understand still. I could ask about gettin’ a place in the city and workin’ down at the shipyards there, if ya’d prefer to be closer to your Mama. I mean it.”

“I’ve told you before, I don’t want to leave this place. I promise you that. I love this island, your home, and I’d love to have a home of my own here, one to share with you. I just don’t ever want you to think you have to always go to so much trouble for me. I’m happy enough without that.”

“I drew up what I want'ta do. ’S not any kind'f official plans or nothin’, but Art’ll know how t'help me with that kinda thing.”

“He’d like that.” You smile, thinking of that poor boy. “He’d like having something to do.”

“I know it. He’ll get put'ta lotsa work when buildin’ time comes. Here.” She lets go of your face, then takes off her jacket and spreads it down on the prickly ground beneath you. Sit and have a look. Tell me if there’s anyhin’ else ya want to put in the house, I got my pencil to draw it on in.“

Smoothing your dress, you sit on her coat, drawing your knees to your chest and making room for her beside you. Carefully, she procures the folded yellow paper from her pocket, and spreads it out before you. It strikes you, how good her drawing is. It’s something you’ve never seen from her before, but the yellow sheet has boxes so painstakingly pencilled that it takes your breath away. A thought strikes you that she may have done this while you slept, that some of the shavings you’ve swept from the table may not have been just your own. You picture her there, hunched over in the low light from the table lamp, and your heart rate quickens in your chest.

"See here?” She points to one wall, where small hashes strike through. “I’ll make ya a bookshelf, like the one in Mr. Brewster’s office at the shipyard. That way ya don’t got'ta stack them up beneath the bed 'nymore. And a desk, right here, with a good light for when ya write home.”

“What’s this?” You breathe, trying to take all of her work in.

“That’s a great big window'n our bedroom, where we can see the stars b'fore we fall asleep at night.” She cocks her head to the side, and you think, maybe, she though that was the most obvious addition in the world.

“Brittany. This is…it’s beautiful.”

“So ya like it then?”

“I do. I think it’s wonderful.”

“Like something in one'a your storybooks?”

“Like something even more so.” You lean over, and you kiss her forehead, the bridge of her nose, beneath each eye, and then finally, the side of your mouth, letting your lips linger there for a long while. “I’d love very much to have my life with you in this place. Though, to be honest, I’d like to have my life with you anywhere at all.”

“I’d like that too.” She whispers, pulling you into her lap. “I’ll start clearin’ some'a this land real soon. I gotta get it built for us then.”


	11. In Everything That's Light and Gay, I'll Always Think of You That Way

You’re a strange sort of giddy, after Brittany shows you the plot of land she’d purchased. For weeks after, you just can’t seem to get it out of your bones. Not that you’d like to, anyhow, but it’s just strange for you. You’ve always been content, even as a small child, but this is the first bit of true happiness you’ve experienced in your life. You are loved. She loves you. And you love her quite wholly in return.

With the weather fully warmed up, you’re busy at the bar, and Brittany is busy on the water, and then, in the evenings, with clearing some of the land before she can build on it. Every night though, she comes to the bar at closing time. She should sleep, you both know she should sleep, but instead, she leads you down the beach, tugging on her suspenders and beaming. She shines her lantern and shows you the work she’s done in the afternoon, she relishes in your praise, and she kisses you in the dark, under the shady pine grove that lines the property.

On the second Friday of May, it pours. You go downstairs, and you open the bar early, figuring it might be wise to do so. Through the smudged window, you look into the harbor, and see that the Alcott’s slip is empty. You sigh heavily, lining the glasses up behind the bar, and checking the bottles of liquor. When it’s like this, you get nervous knowing that she’s out on the water. When it’s like this, you wish that she were inside. You wish that she were in your bed, laying on her side and listening to you read. You wish, more than anything, that you could be certain of her safety.

Two older gentlemen enter the bar, and you serve them your drinks before you go back to worrying about Brittany. You think of the stories you’ve read, about sailor’s wives, staring out into the ocean, waiting for their beloved to come home. You think of tales of woe and agony, when they _don’t._ You think of how there’s nothing you could ever bear less in your life, than if Brittany, if _your_ beloved, was swept away by the sea. At the thought, tears prick the back of your throat, and you turn toward the wall, embarrassed at the tears you’re about to shed over something merely happening in your mind.

“So what’ll you do about it, Woodhull?” One of the men at the bar slaps his hand down. “If she’s getting hitched and moving out to Manhattan, you need to find a replacement.”

“You don’t think I know that? It’s not much of an easy task. The Karofsky girl didn’t want it, and I’d swear it, she might be the only girl on the island with the right sense to teach school.”

At that, your ears perk up. You think of what Brittany has said time and again, of how you should be teaching school, of how it could be a very real and very permanent job for you, once the war ends, and Mr. Edja turns the bar back over to one of the boys. It isn’t in your nature to pry, but you’re not sure how else you could express to these men that you might have the right sense to teach school. That you’ve taught the little girls to read at home. That you sit with Brittany and listen as she slowly pronounces words on a page. That you read book after book, and ache for more, when the ones you have are finished. That you’d be right for the job, if only they give you a chance.

Formulating how to speak to them gives you a break from your omnipresent anxiety about Brittany, and you turn back to the bar, fixing the bottles again, slowly running your fingers over the printed names. For just a brief moment, you considered reading them out loud, but then you nearly laugh at yourself for that foolishness. That certainly wouldn’t prove your capability to teach, and it might make these men believe that you were a fool. Instead, you take a breath, and you smooth your skirt before you turn back around, smiling as you do.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, sir.” Your cheeks burn hot, thinking of what your _abuelita_ would say to this, thinking of how she would swat you for it. “But if you’re speaking of the school here on the island, I might be able to help you.”

“Oh yeah?” The man folds his glasses and sets them down on the bar, extending his hand. “Richard Woodhull, principal of the Ocean Beach school.”

“Santana Lopez, sir. It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Lopez. I presume a gal of your profession hears all sorts of gossip, and you’d know just the one I should be talking to in order to fill my vacancy.”

“I…” The heat in your cheeks flare, and you’re certain that you’re blinking far more rapidly than necessary. “I was hoping that I could possibly be the one to fill the position.”

“You?” He eyes you with a skepticism that makes your stomach churn, and you fist your apron to ground yourself. “Miss Lopez, we run a fine school, and you’re just a barkeep.”

“She certainly talks more properly than anyone else in these parts, hear her out, Dick.” Mr. Woodhull’s friend urges him, and you feel such a debt of gratitude toward the man.

“Go on then.” He nods.

“I’m a barkeep by necessity of the war, Mr. Woodhull. I graduated from Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Manhattan, where I’d gone on scholarship, last spring. My father is a doctor, somewhere on the western front just now, and as my mother has little ones at home, I had to take the first well paying job that came my way. Mr. Edja’s a friend of my father’s, so he offered me a room and a salary if I’d come out here and manage the bar for him. I don’t just keep it, sir, I do the numbers and the ordering as well.”

“So your arithmetic is up to par then, as I’d assume a smart man like Larry wouldn’t have a girl who jumbled the numbers working on his books.” Mr. Woodhull puts his glasses back on, and looks you over.

“I’d like to think my reading is also. My mother sends me books often from the city. I taught my younger sisters to read before their school days, and to write, best as I could.”

“And you’ve been thinking on being a teacher?”

“A little, sir, yes. Captain Pierce’s daughter mentioned I might talk to you about that, so it seems fortuitous that you came in here today.”

“Certainly is.” Mr. Woodhull nods, and less nervous, you release the tight grip on your apron. “You’re not from here though, do you have a beau back in the city, who will come from you before the year is up?”

“Oh.” You shake your head, swallowing hard. You know you’re not lying, at least not with words, but still, you feel oddly…guilty of something. “No, Mr. Woodhull. I plan to stay here permanently. I’ve grown fond of the place, even after the long winter.”

“Well that settles it then.” He booms, and your heartbeat quickens. “Come on down to the school tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, and I’ll have the teaching test ready for you. If you can pass it, then we’ll talk about hiring you on.”

There don’t seem to be enough words to express your gratitude, but you try as well as you can. When Mr. Woodhull and his companion leave, you feel as if you’re bubbling over with excitement. Outside, the rain pummels the roof and the windows, and you’re all alone in the bar, but you can’t help but plan and dream. You dream of teaching here, knowing that you’re doing something more than smiling as you slide drinks across the bar. You dream of coming home in the afternoons to Brittany, inside the house she’s building you. You dream of the future, because it looks so bright, so beautiful.

The day seems to drag, after you come down from your high, and when it starts to hail, you close down the bar for the evening. Mr. Edja has given you jurisdiction on that, and you figure the salary he’d pay Jacob and Ryder would be much greater than the amount of money he’d make in an empty bar. So you go upstairs, and you watch from the window, waiting for the Alcott to finally come in. It unsettles you, you long it’s taking, and you can’t help but keep looking at the clock by the door, counting the moments until Brittany arrives, counting the moments until you can breathe again.

At four-sixteen, you watch her dock. Every breath you held inside leaves your body, and you sink into the window seat. She’s safe, she’s home, and knowing that, you light the stove to make _caldo de pollo,_ and warm her up after a long day of cool, wet weather.

Forty-five minutes later, there’s a knock on your door, and you quickly wipe your hands on your kitchen towel and go to it. When you open it, she stands there in her green rain slicker, hood pulled up, and a grin on her face. You step back, smiling, and she comes through the threshold, stamping her wet galoshes on the mat, before she slides them off, and hangs her coat on the empty peg beside the door. Satisfied that she won’t drench you, she steps forward, and she gathers you into her arms, smelling like salt and sea and rain.

“You’re cold.” You murmur against the soft skin of her face.

“And you’re so warm.” She whispers back, kissing the shell of your ear. “And it smells so good in here.”

“Do you want a hot bath to warm up? I drew one for you, when I knew you’d be in soon enough.”

“Ya drew me a bath?” Her blue eyes crinkle, and her body presses further into your own.

“The way the wind has been whipping, and the rain has been coming down, I thought you might need one before dinner.”

“My girl’s the best.” She beams, and your pulse quickens at the thought of her love for you. “I won’t be too long.”

“Take your time.” You shake your head, though you’re so anxious to tell her about your day. “I’ll be here when you’re through.”

You hear her singing in the bathroom as you put up the rice, and you can’t help but sing along with her from the kitchen. Your giddiness has been amplified by your afternoon, and now, with her in your apartment, it spills forth. When the rice is cooking, you go into your room, and you look through your drawer for the clothes she’s left behind, and you’d washed for her. Satisfied with the slacks and sweater you find, you knock softly on the washroom door, and when she doesn’t answer, crack it open.

She’s beneath the bubbles of the tub, head partially submerged, and eyes clothes. You smile to yourself as you hang her things from the towel rack. It’s an odd sort of domesticity, you think, as you slip out undetected. You wonder what it will be like when Brittany builds the house. You wonder how it will be when you’re not in an apartment that doesn’t belong to you, that is right in the center of everything. You wonder how it will be, when you can have a little herb garden, when you’re isolated from prying eyes, when you can kiss her on the porch. You wonder what it will feel like when it doesn’t feel like you’re hiding.

You’re just setting the dishes down when Brittany comes back into the kitchen, and you look over at her and smile. Her hair is twisted into a damp braid, and she pads across the floor in her warm socks. She waits for you to sit first, and then she takes her seat across from you, grinning with her teeth as she goes.

“Sure’s a nice thing to come into work from. And I mean getting to be with ya, not even just the food.”

“It’s my favorite thing.” You confess, feeling breathy as you say it. “How was your catch today.”

“Huge! Worth goin’ out in this nasty storm for, that’s for sure.” She nods emphatically. “Ya closed the bar early?”

“It wasn’t worth much to keep it open. I had just two customers all day. Considering how little business we did though, I’d say I got lucky.”

“How so?” Brittany leans her chin on her elbow, taking a spoon full of her chicken soup, and studying you intently.

“Mr. Woodhull came in, and he and his friend were talking about how the school will need a new teacher for September.”

“Whoo-ee! I’ve gotta tell my Pop to get a word in for ya! They oughta know ya might be interested in takin’ a job there! I’ll go down to the terminal tonight, ask him to do it first thing in the mornin’!”

“He doesn’t need to.” You laugh at her excitement, and reach across the table to take her hand. “Mr. Woodhull asked me to come down there in the morning, and see if I’m fit for teaching.”

“Sure ya are! You’re the most fit for teachin’ of anybody I’ve ever seen!”

“I do hope so. I’d like to know that I have a job lined up, just in case…”

“No matter what, I’ll take care'a ya. You don’t have'ta worry about all that.”

“I…I do have to worry about it.” You shake your head, gathering your thoughts. “When the war ends, if I don’t have a job, my mother and father will expect me to come home. If I do have one, there will never be a question on why I’d choose to stay.”

“Oh.” She becomes quiet, intently studying the food in her bowl. “I understand that.”

“I’ve promised you, I’m not leaving.” You reach across the table to take her hand. “But I just need to do everything in my power to remain here without disrespecting my parents.”

“Well then we oughta make sure ya get that job, I think.”

“I’ll certainly try my hardest. Mr. Woodhull said it’s been difficult to fill that position, so I hope I do well on the test.”

“Ya know you’re the smartest person I ever met in my life. I know ya have'ta do real good on it.”

“I think maybe I will.” A slow smile creeps across your face, knowing the faith in you she has, knowing that this is your life now.

You finish dinner, and she dries the dishes as you wash them. She’s tired, you can see it in her eyes, but when you finish cleaning up, she sinks down onto the sofa instead of rushing to change into her nightgown. After you turn on the radio, you take the checkerboard down from the shelf, and when she nods with a smile, you move the card table over to the sofa.

For an hour, you play checkers. She beats you nearly every time, and she shrugs sheepishly, leaning over to kiss you. When Bing Crosby comes over the radio, she stands from the sofa, and she extends her hand to you. You take it, and you let her pull you into her arms, leading you to dance around the living room. When the song ends, she looks deep into your eyes, and your breath catches. Sometimes, when she looks at you this way, you feel like you’re falling, deeper, deeper, into some unknown abyss.

Sometime in the midst of your dancing, you lead her into your bedroom. The passion you feel for her overwhelms you often, and you press your body into hers, closing your eyes as her lips press into the hollow of your throat. Deftly, her fingers manage the buttons on your blouse, and your breasts spill into her calloused hands. You kiss her then, feeling the ripple from inside your chest pour into her mouth.

Before you know it, she presses you into the sheets of your bed, bared completely to her. Though perhaps you should think of sin, you never do, when she hovers above you, fingering the gold chain around your neck. You don’t when you feel her soft breasts press against your own. You don’t when she kisses every inch of skin, until she’s propped on her elbows with your knees bend up on either side of her. You don’t when she kisses you in your most private place, baring you most intimately. All you think of is Brittany, Brittany, Brittany, giving mouth, wanting heart, and you fall, uninhibited, until she catches your head in her hands, and kisses your lips with the taste of you on her mouth.

You’re in love, and you’re delirious. You think perhaps, when you lay on top of her, and she lets you touch her so intimately in turn, you love her more. You love the way she gasps for breath as your soft fingers stroke her. You love the way her mouth mashes hard against your own. You love how her skin prickles with goosebumps, and her eyes burn two blue flames. You love how she softens under your touch, hard muscles of a fishergirl loose and pliant. You love how she catches your hand, whispering _enough, enough,_ and brings the palm of it to her lips to hold her silent promises. You love how her braid comes loose of its tie, and her golden hair spreads beneath her, like Venus in _The Metamophoses._ You love her, because she’s yours, and you love her, because you’re hers in return.

Spent, you lay beside her on your pillow, and she strokes your face. Her lids droop, but her eyes remain fixed on your face, studying you, learning you, loving you. You kiss them, because you can, and you feel the muscles of her cheeks tighten in a smile. Though you know you should leave the bed and put your nightgown on, you can’t seem to bring yourself to do it. Her skin is too warm, her touch too reverent, and your heart too swollen with adoration to do anything but lay beside her. So you close your eyes like that, and you fall into a blissful sleep, drowning in the depths of your feelings.

The small silver clock on the bedside table wakes you. She’s not beside you when you open your eyes, but you see her in the early morning light, tugging on her trousers. She wears nothing on top, and your breath catches in your throat. She doesn’t stay with you every night, she cannot even stay with you _most_ every night, so you don’t catch a glimpse of this often enough. But soon you will. Soon you’ll wake every morning to the sight of her, dressing to go out on the sea.

“Good morning.” You murmur, soft, so as not to startle her with your wakeful presence.

“Mornin’, pretty lady.” She turns to you and smiles, revealing the blooming red mark on her left breast, where you’d kissed her too hard, too much. “Wakin’ with the sun then?”

“Always, when you’re here.”

You pull the quilt around yourself as you emerge from the bed, until you take your dressing robe from the hook, and replace the heavy blanket with that over your bare skin. You go to her, and she doesn’t hesitate a moment to take you in an embrace, to kiss your lips, to murmurs that she loves you in the morning as well as the afternoon, and the evening too. It’s reminiscent of a song you’d long sang to the little ones at home, and you smile at the thought. Of her, of them, of the love you have in your life, so deep, so true.

She finishes dressing, and you go into the kitchen to boil the water for coffee. You pack the leftovers from dinner into a bowl for her to take for lunch, and you light the oven to toast bread. Before she emerges from the bedroom, you slather butter and jam on the bread, and you pour the coffee for the two of you. When she leaves, you’ll begin to look over the old primer, left on the shelf from some long ago resident of your apartment. Perhaps it will remind you of the things you should know when you meet Mr. Woodhull, though it’s not current. Perhaps it will give you the knowledge you need to secure the job that will help everything fall into the proper order.

When Brittany comes to the the table, she eats breakfast quickly. The rain has stopped, and you know she’s anxious to get out on the water. She finishes, and she goes for her boots, but before she makes it to the doorway, she whips around quickly, and moves back to you. You stand from the table, and she beams at you.

“I almost forgot to wish ya luck today! I’m going'ta be thinkin’ about it all mornin’ out there. I’ll come right into the bar when I get in.”

“You always do.” You laugh. “But thank you. Your good luck is the best kind of luck.”

“I love you.” She whispers. “I love ya a whole lot.”

“I love you too, Brittany. I’ll see you later.”

After she leaves, you make the bed, and begin by choosing an outfit to wear. You lay your nylons out on the quilt, and you take out your navy print dress, the most modest in color. You’d ironed it before you’d hung it up, but you inspect every inch of it, checking for creases or wrinkles, before you’re satisfied that it is appropriate. Taking down a hat box, you lay the hat beside it on the bed, and you take deep breaths, calming yourself before you bathe.

When you’re finished with your bath, and your skin is softened and scented, you begin on your hair, ironing it flat, before setting it with your rollers. While you wait for it to set, you look over the primer, closing your eyes and spelling in your head, calculating the simple arithmetic, until you feel confident enough that you’re competent in whatever Mr. Woodhull puts before you.

The day is warm again, as you walk over to the school. There’s a ball of lead in the pit of your stomach, and your palms begin to sweat when you arrive in front of the heavy door of the school. Carefully, you wipe the sand from your shoes and you pull the door open. You think of how much faith Brittany has in you, you think of what getting this job will mean, you think of how you’re smart, capable, and you walk down the hall, reading the wooden sign printed _OFFICE._

Inside, the secretary tells you to take a seat. You sit perfectly straight, and though you’ve never been one for fidgeting, even as a small child, you avoid the urge to do such. After five minutes of waiting, you take your book out from your purse, and you lose yourself in the story of Jane and Mr. Rochester. You’ve read it at least a dozen times, but it’s your favorite, it calms you. When the door opens, you quickly close the book again, and tuck it away. Seeing Mr. Woodhull, you stand up, and you smooth your dress, before you step forward to take his extended hand.

“Come back, Miss Lopez.”

“Yes, sir.”

You follow him back into his office, and when he gestures to the seat across from his desk, you sit slowly. Slowly, you breathe in and out, you look him in the eyes, and you watch him lift his pencil to a stack of paper.

“So, I assume you brought your paperwork, Miss Lopez?”

“I wasn’t quite sure what you needed, but I brought my birth certificate, my church records, and my certificate of graduation.” You reach into your bag, carefully removing the envelope of paperwork and holding it to your chest.

“Your birth certificate and diploma will be enough.” He extends his hand, and you slide the necessary papers out and pass them to him. “Excellent. Your test has been prepared for you, I’ll go over these things while you take it, and then I’ll score it.”

Mr. Woodhull escorts you to an empty room, and you take your seat at a wooden desk. You haven’t taken a test since you completed high school, but you’re immediately struck by the simplicity of the answers. They’re the things you’ve helped your sisters to learn at first, then get increasingly more challenging. But even as they do, you’re certain of how to answer them, certain that you’ll score well, certain that you’ll at least have a _chance_ at being offered a position here.

When you’re through, you bring your test back across the hall, and you knock gently on Mr. Woodhull’s door. You sit, stiff as a board, while he scores your test, and it’s impossible to tell by his unchanging face what he’s thinking. He finally finishes, and slowly, he slides your birth and high school certificates back across the desk to you. At once, your heart sinks, and your skin flushes in a strange embarrassment. You assume that you’ve made a fool of yourself even asking to be considered, and your hands shake as you tuck your things back into your purse. Perhaps Mrs. Karofsky will take you on, if Mr. Edja decides he won’t keep you after the war. Or perhaps you can learn to do something useful, like scale fish, or dig enough clams to sell.

“Miss Lopez, I can offer you no more than thirty-four dollars per week starting in September, and I ask that you begin taking correspondence courses before that. Should you remain with my school upon completion of them, you will be reimbursed for the expense.” His tone remains clipped and professional, but you feel your heart soar at your success. “Is that agreeable to you?”

“Oh yes. Sir, thank you. It will be such a pleasure to work here with you, and to teach. I promise I won’t let you down.”

“Time will tell that.” He nods. “We don’t have lodging for a teacher here, have you considered that.”

“I have, Mr. Woodhull. Everything will be worked out by the start of the year, I assure you of that.”

“Excellent. Clara has transcribed your records, and I’d like you to sit with Miss Pillsbury’s class next week before the term is up. Is Monday suitable for you?”

“Yes, sir.” You nod, feeling as if you might burst with delight. “Thank you.”

Before you leave, Mr. Woodhull has you fill out more paperwork, and you try to keep your hand from shaking and smudging your penmanship. You stand when you’re through, and you shake his hand again. Thirty-four dollars a week. It’s certainly a bit more money than you take in now, and it’s certainly more of what you envisioned yourself doing each day, before the necessity of war brought you away from your home, and to this island. Perhaps it comes from the man’s desperation to find a teacher, or perhaps, somehow, Brittany commissioned Captain Pierce to speak on your behalf, and he already managed, even though the hour is early, but still, you feel proud. You feel enthralled, you feel hopeful, so hopeful.

Going home, you take off your shoes and walk along the beach. You consider how you’ll tell Mr. Edja that you plan to leave when summer is out. Perhaps he’ll be expecting it, he never thought for you to stay even a full year, after all, and it will be longer than that when summer ends. But still, through all your excitement, the thought tempers you. If makes you feel a little nauseated. And so, to distract yourself, you look out at the horizon, wondering just where the Alcott is.

When you reach the plot of land Brittany purchased, you stop. The sign you’d carefully lettered _PRIVATE PROPERTY_ is hammered into the sand, and you see how much brush Brittany has removed from the acreage. You never see it during the day, it’s usually after dusk when you walk down with her, when she kisses you, leaning against the sign. In her absence, you lean there yourself, and you look out into the ocean again. Just for a moment, you close your eyes. You imagine waking up each day beside her, watching the sun rise over the water. You imagine walking home from school each day along the sand, and cooking dinner in the kitchen she built. You touch the chain around your neck, and you open your eyes again.

There’s not enough time for you to stay, though you wish you could wander around a bit and gather some of the fallen pinecones. You like the scent of them, and Brittany brings them often, but you have no time today. Instead, you lift the large clamshell that has been discarded in the sand, and you sit it atop the sign post. You’re saying that you’ve been here, in your own sort of way, and it makes you smile. You know it will make Brittany smile too, when she sees it and recognizes it was you. It feels good today, it feels…fitting. It feels right, because today, today may very well be the true beginning of the rest of your life.


	12. I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You)

_Dear Papa,_

_I’m so very happy to have received a letter saying you’re well. I always anxiously await news from you, and I suppose the postmaster here has tired of seeing me so often._

_Things are well here on the island, though I miss Mama and the little girls terribly sometimes. I am, however, writing with a bit of news for you, which I have yet to inform Mr. Edja of. I’ve been offered a teaching position with the local school, beginning in the fall semester._

_While I am certain that you and Mama were hoping I would return home when you return from Germany, I do love it here more than I had expected, and being so young, I cannot imagine that I would be offered a similar position in Manhattan if I were to return._

_As I would not ask Mr. Edja to allow me to remain in my apartment here once I vacate my position at the bar, I have arranged to lease a room from my friend Brittany, the daughter of the ferry captain, and a retired Naval officer for the duration of my tenure._

_My intention is to continue to send money back to Mama, and with the extra income that I will be making, my hope is that I can help with the expense of Marina’s schooling. I have already informed Mama of my plans by telephone, and her letter on the subject may find you first, but I had wanted to write to you as well, in hopes that you will not be angry with me for choosing to stay here._

_I love you very much, Papa, and I pray for your safety each morning and evening._

_Love, Santana_

 

Standing beside the letter box, you take a deep breath, and you slide the envelope inside, watching as it wafts down to the bottom. There’s a deep sense of dread in the pit of your stomach, and you inhale the balmy summer air sharply as you step back.

Your father is a kind man. Unlike the fathers of many other girls you know, he has never sought to force you into a marriage, or ask you to do something that is against what you’d like. But still, you have never before told him by letter that you were leaving home permanently, never told him that you planned to live on an island in the middle of nowhere, and to live with a person he doesn’t know.

Very much, you’d _like_ him to know Brittany, you’d like for all your family to know her, but you fear it too. You wonder, lying awake at night, if they’d see it written on your face, the unnatural love you have for her. You wonder if they’d make you come back home then, if they’d tear you away from her, in fear that God will condemn your soul.

Thinking of it, you shake your head. They’ll meet her, at least your mother and your sisters will, before the summer is out. There are things you need to get from home, some books you had left behind, some of your skirts and blouses from your school days that you might wear when you start your new job. And there are your sisters, the little girls you long to hug close every day of your life. You miss them so terribly, and you promised them, as they clamored for the phone, that you’d be hind to visit them soon. You’ll take Brittany with you then, you’ll show her the world you come from, you let your family meet the girl who owns your heart, even if the fear cuts you to the quick.

She’s broken ground on the house. The trees she needed to clear from the lot are gone, stacked up in neat little piles along the sandy perimeter of the apartment. With David and Michael, she dug up sand and built the stilts your home will stand on to protect it from the sea, and mixed and poured cement to anchor it in place. Forgetting the letter in the box, you walk down to the beach, slipping your shoes off, even though the sand fills your nylons and makes you itch, and inexplicably, your muscles sting. But you’re aching to see what she’s done since you’ve been there last, three days ago, and nothing will slow the pace of your walk.

Before you reach the spot, you hear her laugh ring out, and you hear David’s whistle. You love their easiness, their plain joy, the love they have for one another. They’re a community, even more than your family is with the congregation in church. They love each other, they’d do anything for each other, so far as helping Brittany build a home to live in with her secret lady love. It strikes you powerfully, and your knees go weak. This place, this Island, this home, it’s more than you ever could have imagined.

“Afternoon, Miss.” Arthur tips his hat from the beam he sits upon. You assume the boys carried him down into the sand, so he could be a part of this, and it makes your heart ache something fierce. “I’m the foreman on this crew.”

“Looks like you’re doing a wonderful job.” You laugh, admiring the skeleton taking shape before you. “Thank you for that.”

“Santana!” Brittany waves furiously, hammer in her hand atop the structure of your future home. Before you can even lift your hand to her, you hear the hammer hit the sand, and in a flurry of blonde hair and trousers, she jumps down beside it and strides over to you. “What do ya think? Lookin’ real swell, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know much about building houses, but I think this is the finest frame of a house I have ever seen.”

“Ya think? I sure am proud'a it! Soon enough, we’ll be gettin’ ready’t build it up! Goin’ to have ya in here before the school term starts, if I’ve got anythin’ to say about it.”

“You ought to rest a bit, Brittany.” You hand her the Thermos you’d filled with iced tea, and watch her skin flush as she takes a swig of it.

“Just what I needed!” She beams, stepping so close that you begin to fidget. Her friends know, of course they know, but you’re remarkably shy, and the way she looks at you feels too intimate around public company. “I get plenty'a rest, don’t ya worry your pretty face about that.”

“Brittany.” You murmur, low and warning.

“Santana.” She teases back. “Wanna come on up and see the view?”

“Up there? Is it safe?”

“Do ya think I’d bring ya up if it weren’t?”

“No.” You mean to be playful in your response, but when you speak it, you realize you sound reverent. You _are,_ perhaps. You trust her so deep in your heart that it hurts. “I’d like to see it with you.”

“Cap, we’re goin’ to head on home. Ya keep workin’ us to the bone down here.” Michael grins, taking his hat off and wiping the sweat from his brow. “I need to be home for supper.”

“Go on, go on.” Brittany chuckles, waving them along. “Ya alright, Art?”

“Just fine.” He nods, accepting a lift up from David, only a slight bit of shame showing in his face. “See ya t'morrow afternoon.”

You watch as they head up the beach, and then, you turn your attention back to Brittany. The sun is just beginning to sink in the sky, and you know you have a few hours before it sets completely. Before she does anything else, she gathers up the remains of her tools, indicating that she plans to leave once you come down from the scaffolding, and you watch her. Through her shirt, you see the hard muscles ripple in her her back, and you watch her lithe form duck in and out of the wooden skeleton. She’s beautiful, so beautiful, and seeing her beneath the work she’s done with her hands, beneath the home she’s building you, your breath is stolen.

“Alright then, ya ready to see?”

“I would love to.”

“Step up on my knee, and I’ll help ya up.”

Though you think to object to climbing on her, to telling her that you can make it up the makeshift ladder, the truth is, it wracks your nerves. You trust her, certainly, but you don’t trust your own ability to climb. Sliding your shoes from your feet and leaving them in the sand, you step with nylon clad toes onto her knee, and you feel her secure hold around your waist. A small squeak escapes your lips as she lifts you, and you wrap your hands around the smooth wooden pole when you can grasp it, scrabbling with your feet for something solid.

When you find the wood beneath, you stand up, cautious not to let go of the pole, and perhaps more cautious not to splinter your nearly-bare feet. More quickly than you can imagine, she scales the scaffold, and pops up beside you, taking a bow when she stands straight again. Her hand slips down to take yours in a gentle hold, and you breathe a sigh of relief at having her beside you.

“Here.” Brittany tosses a thin board down over the frame. “Now ya don’t have t’ worry that ya might fall through.”

“Brittany.” You smile, and her eyes crinkle up in response. “Thank you.”

“It ain’t nothin’, had that layin’ around.”

“I mean for everything.”

She holds firm to your hand as you climb onto the board, and she doesn’t settle until you’re seated securely. Your lower back twinges, but you fight a grimace and wait until it passes, unsure where the aches in your body have come from today. Once you’re settled, she sits down beside you, and wraps her arm around your waist, urging you to lean into her. You comply quickly, and finally, when you feel safe in her arms, you look ahead, gasping as you see the ocean waves break before you.

“I’ll be puttin’ a big window right here for ya, with one of those window benches so we can look out at the ocean whenever we feel like doin’ it.”

“That sounds beautiful.”

“Only the best for my best lady.” She kisses your temple. “Did ya have a nice day?”

“I…I sent a letter to my father before I walked down here. I wrote him to tell him that I’m staying here.”

“Do ya think he’ll understand like your Mama did?”

“I certainly hope so.” You suck in a breath. “I think he might be said I won’t be around the apartment any longer, more than anything. Mama is used to that by now, but Papa has never been there without me.”

“I wouldn’t like it much if I had to be anywhere without ya.”

“Neither would I. You have been working so hard to build us this beautiful home, and there is nowhere else I would rather be.”

“I’m workin’ real hard to get it done before the summer ends. I want ya to know ya got a house to live in when ya leave the bar.”

“If it isn’t finished by the fall, I can figure things out.”

“Pop’ll let ya stay with us, no matter what, but I want t'start my life with ya when ya start your own new life.”

“I would really love nothing more than that.” You play with her hands in your lap, feeling her chaffed and calloused skin. “I still need to tell Mr. Edja that I’ll be leaving at the end of the summer. I think I might be a little afraid of that. He was so kind to give me the job to begin with, and that job led me to _you._ I think I owe him a real debt of gratitude.”

“Ya work real hard, I’d say ya paid your debt tenfold. Ya know, I was thinkin’…”

“What were you thinking about?” You turn from the ocean, and you look into her eyes, bright orange from the sun catching in the blue.

“Maybe he’d want t'hire Art on. Even if he can’t see over the bar, he’s real good at managing things.”

“I could talk to him about that, if you think Arthur would want the job. It would certainly make me feel better if I let him know I found someone who might replace me.”

“I can talk to him tomorrow. I’m sure he’d snap that up real quick. I think him helpin’ us out here has been good for him, so I bet he’d cheer up even more if he could be makin’ some money.”

“To tell you the truth, I have really enjoyed getting to know him. Despite our rocky start, I look forward to his company.”

“Now that ya know there ain’t nothin’ to be scared of about me and Art, and now that he knows your my girl.” She laughs, pulling you closer. “Art’s the only one I know who reads even close to as many books as I see ya readin’. I do like it when ya read to me at night though, your voice makes the stories sound real.”

“Do you really like that? I’ve often wondered if I bore you with it.”

“Course not. It’s even better'n the radio! I know ya read lots'a books during the day, but I like how ya save our stories and don’t skip ahead. I know ya read this one so many times ya almost know the words without readin’, but still.”

“It just makes me happy that you have been enjoying it so much.”

“I do like Jo best though, and all her trampin’ around.”

“I like Jo best too.” You smile, though you don’t tell her that sometimes she reminds you of Jo March, but without such a temper. She must know, you think, but you just keep looking ahead at the waves lapping the shore. “I’m not sure there is a more beautiful place in the world, though I can’t think I’d care much if it was ugly looking out from here. It would still make me happy knowing you build it.”

“I think ya gotta pick some furniture and things. I’m good at the building, but I’m not so sure about the rest.”

“I looked in the Sears catalogue, and everything looks so expensive. I have been trying to put aside some of my money each week to help pay for it.”

“Don’t ya remember that I was going t'have to get all this anyway, if ya weren’t livin’ with me? The money I got put aside’ll be plenty, and I’d like if ya picked what ya wanted.”

“I might be more comfortable if you and I were to pick it out together. I know it might be a silly thought for furniture, but this will be both of our home.”

“I don’t know much about furniture, but if ya wanted that…I think that’d be alright.”

“There isn’t much I know about it either, I haven’t ever picked any out before.”

“But ya know about pretty things. I think ya might be better at it than me.”

“Brittany.” You cock your head to the side, heat creeping up your neck. “I know that you know about pretty things too, like the flowers on my table right now.”

“They just reminded me of ya, so I picked ‘em when I went over to the mainland.”

You are never really certain what to say when she says things like that about you, so you lean a little further into her as you look out over the deep blue water that spreads out before you. It’s easy to imagine your future when you’re sitting here. It’s easy to allow the anxieties that churn deep within your belly to melt away. With Brittany, things are easy, despite how hard the should perhaps be. Her arms provide you a safety net, a soft place to fall when you’re anxious and afraid, a refuge from the storms of your mind.

Together, you sit for a long while. Truthfully, you may be a little afraid to get down from your perch, but also, you feel so comfortable there, up above the world, that you don’t want to leave. But the wind whipping off the ocean sends a chill through you, and without a jacket of her own, Brittany can only warm you so much with her body.

So you prepare yourself to come down and start the long walk home. She jumps first, and you gasp, fearful she’ll injure herself. Of course, she doesn’t, and she climbs halfway up the makeshift ladder to help you. It’s sweet, and you love her more for the way she checks to make sure your skirt doesn’t catch, and your feet don’t slip. When you’re safe on the sand again, you lift your shoes and tuck them beneath your arm, watching as she carefully arranges the fresh boards beneath the scaffold, and she gathers her tools up in her bag.

As you walk down the beach, you fight the increasing chills that you feel, and Brittany looks down at her feet, sheepish, you think, that she doesn’t have a jacket or a sweater for you. She’s like that, so concerned for your well being, and she pulls you closer for as long as she can, she holds up there, until houses begin to dot the beach, and she knows she has to let you go. You shiver more then, colder from the loss of her body heat, and she frowns as you make your way up the worn wooden steps off the beach.

Your hands shake as you attempt to unlock the door to your apartment, and you can’t figure out how it got so cold so quickly. It’s been so hot, even with the ocean breeze, and yet, tonight, the sun seems to have stolen all the warmth when it sank into the sea. Finally, you manage to open the door, and you rub your arms furiously with your hands, reaching for your sweater that hangs from the hook beside the front door.

“Cold, pretty lady?” She asks, closing the door behind herself and eyeing you with concern.

“Just a little, it’s alright.” You shrug it off. “I made a vegetable pie this morning that I was going to warm up for dinner. Is that alright with you, or would you rather something else?”

“I’m gettin’ spoiled with all these fancy suppers. That sounds swell to me!”

As she always does at dinner time, she finds her way to wash up while you go to the kitchen. The chill doesn’t leave you as you light the oven, and to try to force it away, you light the stove as well. You fill the percolator will water, hoping a cup of coffee will warm you up, and you take the pie from the icebox and slide it into the oven. When you pour your coffee, you begin to feel lightheaded, and you sink down into a chair, sipping it slowly, though your hands shake and threaten to slosh it over the edges.

Your head begins to throb, and you’re uncertain what’s wrong. You had been fine, mostly, besides the ache you felt earlier, but suddenly, you’re feeling incredibly ill. Slowly, you set your coffee cup down on the saucer, and you take a deep breath, trying to stave off your headache, but everything feels blurry. You don’t even realize Brittany has finished bathing until you feel a hand on your shoulder, and pricks shoot down your spine, settling in your lower back.

“Are ya alright, Santana?” She asks you, but lifting your head to look at her feels far too difficult.

“Suddenly I’m not feeling very well suddenly.” You shake your head slowly. “I’m not quite sure why.”

“What do ya feel?”

“Blurry.” You speak the only word you can muster, and try to focus on her form kneeing beside you.

“Blurry.” Brittany repeats. “I think ya oughta get in to bed.”

“I have dinner in the oven.”

“I’ll take it out'a the oven. Ya look really pale, pretty lady. I think ya should be layin’ down.”

“Alright.” You whisper, not feeling the strength to argue with her.

Before you can say anything else, Brittany lifts you from your chair, and she carries you into the bedroom. Tenderly, she helps you out of your nylons and dress, and dresses you in your nightgown. Her hands feel rough on your skin, gentle as she is, and you squeeze you eyes shut, letting her tuck you beneath the covers.

You fall into a fitful asleep quickly, a cold chill waking you every so often throughout the night. When the sun through your window prevents you from sleeping any longer, you roll onto your side, and curl your legs to your chest feeling you hair cling to to your face, and the sharp pinch of a stray hairpin against your ear. Everything still aches, everything is still cold, and slowly, you crack your eyes open.

At your bedside, Brittany sits rigid a chair. A basin of water sits on the table, and you can see her worrying her hands in her lap. From what you can see of her face, she appears to have been awake through the night, and despite how ill you feel, your heart skips in your chest. You love her, you love her, you love her, and her presence settles you, unsettled as you feel.

“Brittany.” You croak, startled by the sound of your own voice.

“Good mornin’ sunshine.” She leans over, carefully kissing your forehead. “Ya still feel real warm.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

“’S alright, I wanted to keep cooling ya down. Looks like summer flu. Runs around here every year 'round this time. Pop says it’s from the damp evenin’s, when the ocean cools everythin’ down. Since ya keep comin’ to see me down on the beach each night, and your body’s not as used to it as the rest of us, seems like that makes sense.”

“I feel awful. But you don’t have to sit here and care for me. It must be nearly time for you to leave.”

“I’m keepin’ her in today. I already went down to tell the boys they had the day off. You’re real sick, and I don’t want to leave ya.”

“Brittany. You shouldn’t stay in on my account. I’ll be alright.” You tell her, though everything aches and prickles and weighs. “I’ll take some Blosser’s and you won’t have to worry.”

“I’m stayin’ on my account. Won’t be safe for me out there, if I’m worryin’ after ya in here. Sometimes the flu causes hallucinations, and you shouldn’t be all alone in case.” She worries her lip between her teeth. “Ya shouldn’t be arguin’ with me, ya might tire yourself out.”

“I think I might already be tired out. But I wish you might lay down with me, and have a rest. I’m so cold beneath the blankets…”

“I think ya might be trying to trick me.” A slow smile creeps across her face, and then she yawns, stretching her hands about her head. “But I might just fall for it.”

Though you’re sore to the tips of your hair and the beds of your nails, when she crawls into bed with you, you let her hold you. While you’d slept, your dreams had been increasingly vivid, and vaguely terrifying, though you can’t remember just what frightened you about them. But her arms are your home, your safety, and though your body writhes with discomfort, having her near is calming, soothing.

It’s still difficult for you to stay awake, and you don’t fight the urge to rest. The dreams come again, each time you fall back into slumber, and you wake over and over again with a start. Your head throbs, your throat stings, your limbs are heavy, but the nightmares are the worst, the nightmares feel real. While you sleep, you see the view from where the windows will be in your new home. You breathe the scent of salt air and bayberry and pine. You watch the ships on the water, as you read your stories, and you see the Alcott on the ocean, Brittany at the helm. And then it all changes. The sky grows dark, and the smell of sulfur fills the air. Raindrops pitter-patter on the windows, and then pelt harder as the wind picks up. Before your eyes, the Alcott takes on water, filling and slipping beneath, as you do nothing but scream.

The dreams caused by illness are too vivid, too lifelike, and finally, you wake up sobbing and thrashing. She’s there when you do, sitting up quickly in alarm, hushing you, wiping the sweat from your face and neck. You can’t articulate your nightmares to her, you _won’t,_ because though she knows you worry after her when she’s out at sea, she is unaware of just how gripping the fear is. So you let her cool you down with water, you let her kiss your head and stroke your cheeks. You let her bring you cool water, and flu powder. You let her change your nightgown when the sweat had soaked through it and caused you such discomfort that it becomes impossible to sleep. You let her be here, though you know she should be working. You let her be your family, when your mother is so distant. You let her love you, because it’s what you love best.

“I’ll always take care of ya, Santana.” You hear her whisper, as you’re on the verge of another fitful sleep. “Ya won’t ever be alone.”


	13. Carry Moonbeams Home in a Jar

You don’t get well. You’re not so sick that you have to lay in bed all day, but you still don’t feel quite right. You’re a bit feverish, and your limbs feel swollen and stiff, but you have no choice but to work. You insist to Brittany that you simply cannot stay home from work, that no matter how exhausted you feel, you’ve made a commitment to Mr. Edja, and you’re not sure how well he would take to an illness that immobilizes you for a long period of time.

She watches you carefully. Each afternoon, she comes to the bar, and she orders one drink so she can keep a bit of an eye on you before she goes to work on the house. You wave her off each time, you promise her that you’ll be just fine, that you’ll send down for her if you’re unwell, and you continue to work, moving slowly as you pour drinks and smile at the patrons. You ache, but you refuse to allow it to show. Not until you leave for the night, and Brittany draws you a bath, insisting you soak to ease the pain in your body. Insisting that she care for you, and cook you simple dinners so you get to rest.

 

Every night now, she stays. Previously, it had just been a few times a week, but now, now she’s insistent upon laying beside you in bed, stroking your damp hair from your face, tending to you when you toss and turn in your sleep. You’re certain she no longer sleeps, you’re certain she watches you through the night, ready with a cool cloth or a tin pail at your bedside, in case you vomit and can’t make it all the way to the toilet. You beg her not to sacrifice her sleep, you swear to her that it’s just a summer flu, and you’ve tended to your sisters with such illnesses, and have tended to yourself as well, but the way she loves you doesn’t allow her that rest. And you know, with great certainty, that had she been the one so ill, you would care for her in just the same way.

You develop a rash on your thigh. Though you haven’t been intimate with Brittany in some time, not feeling much like doing more than kiss her, she sees it when she helps you change into your nightgown one evening when your body is too sore to do so yourself. When she sees the rash, you watch panic cross her face, but when you question her, she says nothing, just kisses your forehead, and murmurs _sweep dreams, pretty lady,_ before you fall into another night of fitful slumber.

When you wake in the morning, she sits by your bedside, fully dressed in her trousers and shirt, shoes on her feet and cap on her head. You suspect it’s later than she should still be on shore, and you sigh heavily, wishing she wouldn’t miss days of work for you. You attempt to sit up, and a sharp wave of nausea hits you, making you recoil back, before leaning over the edge of the bed and vomiting into the waiting receptacle. It’s a pain like you hadn’t known before this illness struck you, and a deep, nagging part inside of you tells you that you’re very unwell. The thought terrifies you, and you fight back the tears that spring to your eyes. You have found love, you have found true happiness, and the fear that you’ve perhaps contracted something that will take that all away makes you shake, both from fevered chills and horror.

“Ya don’t look quite well this mornin’, pretty lady.” Brittany ties your hair back with the ribbon on your night table, and kisses your forehead. “I went on down and made a call to Doc on the mainland, told him he ought t’ see ya.”

“Okay.” You acquiesce, your voice scarcely a whisper, though you’d previously been resistant to this very idea.

“I don’t like that mark ya got on your leg, and ya keep on gettin’ sicker. I sent Davey ‘n the boys out, and I’m gonna take ya on over by the ferry boat. Probably better for the nausea than takin’ Davey’s dinghy. Pop’s next trip is comin’ up at quarter-past nine.”

“Is it already so late?”

“Just about. We oughta get ya into some clothes, and walk on down there soon.”

“Alright.” You nod slowly, though you don’t try much to move from the bed. “Would you mind helping me dress?”

“Course not.” Brittany stands and goes to the bureau, taking out a soft grey dress, and a pair of your sheer nylons. “This alright?”

As she dresses you, your body feels limp beneath her touch, but she caresses you softly, she kisses the goosepimpled skin, and combs your coarse hair. For a moment, you feel fear that she might catch what you have, but then you think, perhaps, that if she were going to, she already would have, sleeping beside you each night.

Before you leave, she washes out your pail, leaving it to dry in the sink, and she takes the afghan from the back of your sofa and drapes it over your shoulders. The mercury on your thermometer reads above eighty-degrees, but you feel chilled, and she knows that. You feel chilled, and when her arms can’t warm you, she provides a blanket to do the same.

You struggle to walk the gangplank of the ferry, your knees throbbing that same dull ache, and she guides you, finding you a seat just in the front. You’re glad for that, certain it would be too difficult for you to walk further. When the soot begins to rise from the tall smokestack, and the boat charges across the bay, you lean into her side, finding it difficult to keep your head up. You’re grateful for the late morning quiet on the boat, and more than anything, you’re grateful that Brittany fears other people so much less than you do.

Upon docking, she helps you back down, tipping her hat to her father, and gets you into a hired car. You’re not quite sure how she’s managed to arrange all of this, but you feel too ill to ask any sort of questions. You simply let her care for it all, you simply trust that she will handle it in a way you currently cannot, and when you arrive in front of a brick building on the Main Street of town, you know that you’d managed your trust appropriately.

“Doc Davis’ll take real good care'f ya. He was an army doc like your pop, in the first war, and he’s always taken right good care'f me. I called him up early and told him about the rash ya got and how sick ya have been, and he thinks he can help.”

“I hope so.” You nod listlessly, as Brittany opens the heavy wooden door. “This sickness is starting to scare me.”

“We’re gonna get ya all taken care of, I promise.”

She ushers you inside, and you sit down, carefully writing down your name on the log the receptionist presents you, though your hand shakes as you do. You worry a bit, about how much money this might cost, and if you even _have_ enough in your purse. Perhaps he’ll let you give him the rest later, when you’re well enough to take the ferry back over on your own. Or perhaps Brittany has something she can lend you until you’re home, and can think clearly enough to organize yourself.

“Miss Lopez.” The doctor calls, and your heart drops into your stomach, settling as a pit of anxiety below your naval. “You can come on back now.”

“You’ll be just fine.” Brittany nods, though you wish she could squeeze your hand, you wish she could kiss your head, you wish she could hold you close as the doctor examines you. But you know she can’t, you know she has to stay out here, and you stand on your trembling legs, walking slowly back behind the closed door.

As you settle on the examination table, it strikes you that you’ve never seen any doctor other than your father before. Never in your life have you had much more than a stomach sickness or a headache. Even your mother has been tended to by him, except when the midwife has come to deliver her babies, and the thought of a strange man touching you is unsettling. But Brittany trusts him. Brittany says he can help you, and you ball your hands into fists as he presses the stethoscope against your chest and then carefully examines your elbows and knees.

“Can you tell me a little about your illness? I heard a bit on the telephone this morning, but it would be helpful to hear you tell it.”

“A little over two weeks ago, I developed a headache, and then I was so achey and lethargic that I had to go to bed. I have been checking my own temperature and have had a consistent fever.”

“And your joints? You have quite a bit of swelling that I can see.”

“The joints of my knees are the most painful, almost arthritic, I would imagine. It helps me to soak in the bathtub in the evenings.”

“May I see the rash that you have?”

“I—” You take a deep breath, heat creeping up the back of your neck as you consider having to take off your nylons. “It looks as if it might be just a bug bite.”

“I understand that.” Dr. Davis nods. “But I see a few cases like yours each summer, and typically they include a circular rash. I have found that benzylpenicilin has successful results, but I do need to confirm that you’re suffering from what I believe you may be.”

“May I…may I have a moment of privacy before that?”

“Yes, of course, and I will have my nurse come in if that will make you more comfortable.”

“Thank you, it would.” Santana nods.

It takes you much longer than it normally would to remove your nylons, but you manage it, neatly folding them in your lap, and sliding your shoes back onto your feet. When Dr. Davis and the nurse come back in, you are so painfully embarrassed that you’re certain they can see it on your face. You understand it’s just your thigh, that he’s not seeing you or touching you in any intimate way, but still, your mother always placed a heavy value on modesty. So you look away as he examines you, and the nurse nods her reassurances to you, which you’re grateful for.

“My suspicions were correct, you have the typical _erythema migrans_ that presents in other people I’ve seen with symptoms like yours, and I have no reason to assume that the same treatment I’ve given in the past will not work for you.”

“What is…is it a contagious pathogen? And is it a poor prognosis?” You feel your heart begin to race harder, and your head get lighter.

“You speak like a doctor, Miss Lopez.”

“I grew up with my father, who is a family doctor and general surgeon currently serving our country overseas.” You rush out, gathering the pleats of your dress in your hand.

“I ask you to thank him for his service. I was too old to go back overseas for this war. But I served my time in the last.” Dr. Davis shakes his head, and you think he may be remembering things, the way Arthur often seems to. “I have not seen any evidence that your condition is contagious, and with a long course of benzylpenicillin and quite a bit of rest, I suspect you will find yourself in recovery. I can’t promise it will heal you completely, but it will certainly help.”

“Is that all?”

“It is. I suggest you keep up soaking your joints as well, as you said it was helpful, but I will just write you this prescription, and the pharmacist at Whelan’s should be able to fill it for you this morning.”

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Davis.” You breathe a bit easier, though you’re still fearful that perhaps the course of antibiotics won’t work. “Thank you so much.”

“You are quite welcome, Miss Lopez. Your friend Brittany and the Captain have been quite generous with me for some time, and have only once used my services, so it is my pleasure to help a friend of hers.”

Slowly, after the doctor leaves you, you put your nylons back on, and you smooth your dress, knees wobbling as you do. Brittany waits for you outside the door, taking congenially with Dr. Davis when you emerge. When you reach into your purse, she shakes her head to you, indicating that it is taken care of. You’re not certain if that comes as a result of her arrangement with the physician, or if she has paid for it herself, but either way, you feel a swell of gratitude in your chest. She treats you with such tender care, she loves you so wholly, and if your joins were not already riddled with this ailment, you believe they would feel weak simply from that.

Brittany folds your blanket and tucks it under her arm as you walk to the pharmacy together. The trapped heat between the buildings makes it hard for you to breathe, and every few feet, you have to take a break. The very idea of how slowed down you’ve become frustrates you, but you pray, fingering the cross around your neck, that Dr. Davis is right. You pray that you’ll be well before the summer is out. You pray that you’ll be able to kiss Brittany again like you used to do, to feel her fingers trace your body with passion instead of concern. You pray that you’ll be able to walk down the beach with ease, to see the home she’s building and can now only show you with her words. You pray, more than anything, that you’ll heal, and that this isn’t some sort of divine punishment for your own actions.

While you wait for your medication, Brittany buys you lunch at the pharmacy counter. You take slow sips of your Coca Cola and pick at your baked ham sandwich, but you can’t bring yourself to eat even most of it. When you know you can’t even attempt it anymore, Brittany wraps it in wax paper for you, and tells you that maybe you’d like to finish it for dinner. You just nod, though you’re certain you won’t, and you feel awful that she spent her money to buy you something you can’t eat.

Once the pharmacist hands you the amber bottle of pills, Brittany has managed to find a car to take you back to the port. She talks to her father for a few moments after you’re settled in your seat, and before you know it, you’re back home. As much as you’d like to crawl into your bed and sleep through the day, following Dr. Davis’ orders to rest, you know that you have to open the bar.

“Are ya sure you’re gonna be alright t'work?” Brittany asks you, brow furrowing deeply with concern.

“I will be. I know you want to go down to the house today too, if I stay here, so will you.”

“I’d put off workin’ on it as long as ya need me to, ya know.”

“I do.” You nod, leaning into her kiss on your forehead. “But I’ll be alright. Maybe tonight I’ll feel up to walking down the beach.”

“Okay.” She nods, though she knows as well as you do that she won’t. Knows that it’ll take time. Knows that as much as you want to, you just physically _can’t._

* * *

 

It takes nearly three weeks for you to feel any sort of change. But it comes. Your fever goes down, and though your knees still shake, you find it easier to walk. You know that Brittany watches you carefully, and you know, when you wake on Sunday morning to her still sleeping soundly beside you that she’s confident in your recovery. So you slip from the bed, and slide your slippers on your feet before you go into the kitchen and begin making breakfast. It feels like it has been so long since you could do that, and to stand at the stove, watching the whites of the eggs bubble and the thick white bread toast in the oven feels like a miracle.

You feel her come into the kitchen behind you. She doesn’t say a word, but you know she’s there. She’s not quiet on her feet, and she pads across the kitchen to you, pressing her front into your back. Her fingers trace the hem of your nightgown, and trail upwards, until her hand rests softly on your unencumbered breast. Desire surges through you, and it’s the first time since you fell ill that a tingling sensation runs from your breast down your spine, settling low in your belly. It’s silly, you know that. Her touch wasn’t meant to elicit such a reaction, but it does, and you put the hand that doesn’t hold the spatula over hers, reveling in the way she cups you so tenderly.

“Ya look well this morning.” She breathes into your ear, lips folding in a featherlight kiss on the shell.

“I feel well. I wanted to make you breakfast. I’ve missed this.”

“I’ve missed ya feeling well. I’ve missed seeing the color in your cheeks like this, and feelin’ ya smile.”

“You took such good care of me.” You whisper, wishing you had more words to explain how that made you feel. “It’s because of you that I’m feeling well again.”

“Naw, Dr. Davis did everything, I was just here, makin’ sure ya didn’t have to be alone.”

“You did so much more than that. Sometimes I—” You shake your head, turning the eggs in the pan.

“What?”

“It’s not anything very important. I was just thinking of the heroes in all the books I’ve read, and it’s not like this.”

“I’m not sure what ya might be sayin’.”

“In the books, there is always some sort of grand gesture. The hero saves her life, or whisks her away from her family, or slays a dragon. But with you, you’re a hero every day in a small way, and it all adds up to something so much greater than one act of grandeur.”

“I just love ya with my whole soul, so I want to make sure ya always have everything ya need and want.”

“You have done that from the first moment I met you. It’s been nearly a year, hasn’t it?”

“T'morrow.” Brittany murmurs, and Santana feels her skin prickle with heat against her back.

“Tomorrow?”

“The first time I ever got to kiss ya was a year ago t'morrow. I sure was certain ya might run off into the night, but then ya kept on hangin’ around with me, and now, ya let me build ya a house, and we’ll live there together as if I could marry ya at the old church at Ocean Beach. I sure wish I could let ya wear that ring I got, ya know. But I s'ppose then everyone’d start askin’ ya questions and folks might not all take kindly to such a thing.”

“I’ve never known a girl to love another girl until I loved you myself, and then saw the other ladies doing such a thing when you took me to Cherry Grove. It’s your brother’s ring though, Brittany. You should keep that.”

“I’d like to give it to ya much more than I’d like to keep it. I thought about maybe gettin’ a chain for ya so you could wear it in secret.”

“Brittany.” You lean back into her, closing your eyes. She’s every bit of good you’ve ever known to exist in the world, and just being in her embrace makes you feel as if you’re absorbing some of that good in yourself. “I would wear anything you gave to me. I’ll be so glad when my bracelet doesn’t feel so heavy on my wrist anymore.”

“It always makes me real glad to see it on ya.”

You eat breakfast across from one another, and she smiles at you over and over again, until you feel as if perhaps you can’t take another smile. There’s much to do, things you haven’t felt capable of managing for a long time, but today, you think you’d rather have for her. Today, you want the quiet of your mind that being close beside her brings.

“Brittany. I’d like to walk the beach with you today.”

“Ya think ya finally feel up to it?” A smile spreads across her face from ear to ear. “I’ve got a lot to show ya since last time ya saw the house.”

“I’m still not certain how you’ve managed to get so much done while looking after me.”

“Wait til ya see! I’m gettin’ closer. Ya think the heat of the day is too much? I could go down and pull up my traps, and cook up some crabs on the beach for ya at sundown.”

“That sounds like a really beautiful night, Brittany. And I do think it might be better for me to avoid the heat and the sun. I seem to move and breathe a little easier when I’m shaded and beneath the fan.”

“I could fan ya tonight, if ya need me to.”

“I think I’ll be alright. I might even need a sweater with me.”

“Then that’s all ya need to pack, I’ll take care'a the rest.”

Though you spend most of the morning together, listening to the the radio, reading a book out loud to her, talking about your future together, around noon, she has to go down to the dock and handle some things. It may be her day off, but sometimes things can’t be helped, and you spend the time sweeping the floors of your apartment, cleaning the things you haven’t had the strength to clean, putting fresh sheets on your bed and tucking the others away for laundry day.

When she returns late in the afternoon, she’s has a bucket full of soft shell crabs, and she’s whistling. While you hate to watch her cook the crabs alive, you do so enjoy eating them the way she taught you, and you enjoy the way you leave all cares about your appearance behind as you devour them with your hands. Brittany has a picnic basket as well, and you button your sweater over your oldest dress before you lock the door behind you, and let her usher you down the beach.

Though you can smell the ocean air through your window, you realize in just a few weeks, how deeply you’d missed the feeling of the sand between your toes, of the spray off the shore, of the way Brittany slips her hand into yours as soon as you’re far enough away from where many people in town seek out solace past the dune. She smiles at you when she takes your hand, and you squeeze it in return. It’s an _I love you,_ it’s a _thank you,_ it’s a _what did I ever do in the time before I knew a love so deep._

You’re stunned when you arrive at the site of the house. For a moment, you convince yourself that you’re in the wrong place. Where the skeleton stood on the fateful day you fell ill, the home has begun to take shape. Heavy boards enclose the space, and are dotted with spaces cut for windows and doors. It’s starting to look like a home, _your_ home, and the sight of it takes your breath away.

“I built ya some stairs up the back. I know ya aren’t too fond of the ladder. And soon as I got all the rest done, I’m gonna start on the porch and the stairs right on down to the beach.”

“Can I see inside?” You shake your head in disbelief. At the house, at _her._

“Yeah! Come on up!” She drops her bucket and basket in the sand, and places her hand on the small of your back. I’ll give ya the whole tour.“

"I wish there was something I could do to help, you’ve done so much work.” You marvel as you hold the rudimentary banister to climb the wooden steps up the back.

“Ya give me the inspiration for it. But maybe when I finish the walls, ya can come sit with me while I paint 'em?”

“I would really love to help you paint them, if that’s alright.”

“That does sound like great fun! I’d love to have ya for it! But perhaps first I should show ya what ya might be gettin’ into.”

She walks you through the first floor of the house first, stepping through the spaces in the boards that will become the doorways. In each room, she beams brighter, showing you where the kitchen will be, the living space where you’ll choose a sofa and a table for your radio, the little nook she’s built in the corner, a _library,_ for all your books, she promises, the space where she’ll run plumbing, and be sure there’s room enough for a bathtub.

You look out through the gaping hole in the wall to the ocean from the living area, and she grins, telling you she’ll put grand doors that open to the porch. Then she walks you up the second set of stairs, inside in the back of the house, telling you to watch your step for loose nails. The upstairs is wide open. All that is there is one big room, with the widest window you’ve ever seen, and the open sky above you. Beneath the window space, there’s a pile of pillows and quilts, some you recognize from Brittany’s bed. Beside you, you see her skin flush, even in the low evening light, and you lean into her side, kissing her shoulder.

“What is all of this for?”

“I thought…maybe if ya wanted, we could sleep up here beneath the stars tonight. We don’t have to, but I brought lots over to keep ya warm, and I figured maybe it could be a kind'f practice from when I’m all finished and we get to move on in. But I wanted ya to be comfortable, not just sleepin’ on the bare wood.”

“I’d sleep anywhere with you.” You tell her in such an earnest way that you feel perhaps like you’ve morphed into one of the protagonists of your novels. But maybe that’s what love does, you’re not quite certain. “And this sounds especially appealing.”

“Then I’m real glad I packed the lamp.”

You go back down to the beach, and Brittany lights a fire in the sand made of cleared brush. You sit back with your shoeless toes curling into the cool evening sand, and you watch as firelight dances over Brittany. She looks surreal in the flickering red, even more beautiful than she does at any other time, and you catch her smiling at you as she turns the charring crabs over with a stick.

You burn your fingers and your mouth, eating the crabs straight out of the fire, but you don’t mind it a bit. You love the sweetness of the meat, you love with sweetness of Brittany’s _glances,_ proud that you’ve finally gotten the hang of eating them.

When you’re full, you lay your head in her lap, closing your eyes and listening to the rush of the ocean. Her fingers comb through your hair, and you relax further beneath her touch. Your limbs feel tired, and you know you’re still not completely well, but laying here like this, breathing in the salt air, being touched by Brittany, you feel a further healing set in. Just a little while longer and you’ll be living right on this spot, just a little while longer, you’ll feel fully at peace, tucked away from the rest of the world with with.

“You’re falling asleep.” She murmurs, leaning down to kiss your forehead.

“Am I?” You open your eyes slowly, taking in her face.

“I feel ya goin’ limp. I don’t mind it at all, but I think maybe ya would be more comfortable if we went upstairs and I made up our pillow bed.”

“Mmkay.” You smile, shuffling into a sitting position. “That sounds nice.”

She guides you back up the two flights of stairs, and you’re a bit winded when you reach the top. Taking a breath, you help her lay out the bed of pillows, and spread a comforter over them. When it looks almost as if it’s a real bed, you watch her as she undoes her trousers and strips down to simply her undershirt and knickers. She sits down atop the pillows, and watches you as you carefully unbutton your dress and slide off your shoes, leaving you in just a slip and your own knickers.

The lamp glows a low ethereal light, and you sink down beside her, squeezing her hand before you lay back. Above you is the vastness of the starry night, and when she turns out the lamp, you can still see her face in the reflection of the moon. She kneels above you, leaning down gently to kiss your lips. You deepen the kiss, missing such intimacy with her, and you feel her hands brush your stomach through your slip, you feel the silk slide up just a little as she kisses you more passionately.

“I’ve stopped feeling quite so tired.”

“Ya think?”

“I know.” You graze your fingers over the back of her neck, holding her close to you.

“Is it all right if I love ya now?” She asks, voice cracking a bit as she does.

“If you’d like to.” You shy a bit, certain that she must feel beneath her fingertips how ravaged you’ve been by weeks of illness.

“I’ll be real gentle, I promise not to hurt ya.”

“I know, more than anything else, that you never would.”

She begins with another kiss to your mouth. Gently, you trap her bottom lip between your teeth, and you close her eyes, relishing the passionate motion that you’d gone so long without. She brushes her thumb over the apples of your cheeks, and she kisses your chin, smiling against sallow skin, before she lifts your slip completely over your head.

It’s different in the starlight. It’s different after so many weeks without, but she doesn’t touch you hungrily. She’s careful, she’s _reverent,_ and you watch her brush each of your lips with such tenderness, watching your nipples peak as desire fills you. She kisses them too, tongue poking out to lave attention on them. You’re not certain it’s normal, the rush of desire you feel when she does this to you, but you can’t help yourself, you can’t help but push the back of her neck to draw her closer.

Though Brittany prefers best to kiss you between your thighs, having developed an affinity for it when you’d first discovered that way to make love to one another, she doesn’t do that this morning. Instead, she hovers over you, holding the side of your face with one hand and pleasuring you between your thighs with her other. There’s such a level of intimacy to this position she has you in, to the way she watches you for any sign of pain, the way she looks at your face with complete adoration. When you feel your insides coil and snap, she touches you gently, until your body stops clenching, and then she ghosts her fingers up your side, strumming your ribs with them, and brushing them over your lips.

“Ya really are the most beautiful girl in the world.” She murmurs, looking so deep into your eyes that you shiver. “I’d love to stare at ya just like this all night, but I’m afraid ya might get cold, 'specially when you’re just gettin’ better.”

“Perhaps. Though I’m certain I couldn’t move to dress right now, no matter how hard I tried.”

“Let me dress ya then, and wrap ya up in the blankets and my arms.”

Though it’s a warm night, and you know you shouldn’t feel the chills, you do, and you’re grateful at the way she dresses you back in your slip so gently, grateful how she tucks the blankets around you. Once she’s settled back beside you, you lay your head on her chest, and you look up at the stars again, listening to her heartbeat.

“I think I’d like having no roof above us here.”

“What’ll we do when it rains then? I don’t think ya would much like gettin’ all your things soaked.”

“That’s certainly the truth. But being intimate with you beneath the stars was beautiful.”

“The most.” She whispers, ghosting kisses along your hairline. “Do ya feel sore at all?”

“My knees are, a bit, but they’re alright.”

“I’ll rub 'em for ya, help ya fall asleep?”

“I would really appreciate that, Brittany. Thank you.”

“Thank ya too Santana, for gettin’ sweet on me, and fallin’ in love with me, and bein’ my best girl every day.”


End file.
